ITF

141 M ario: I remember vividly in '92 when Croatia competed in the Olympics the first time and we won silver in basketball and Goran [Ivanisevic] won the bronze in tennis, I saw how big it was for the country, and growing up in that environment and being proud of where I'm coming from. It's something you dream of as a kid. I know people were actually proud of what we achieved and it was nice – I feel it was always valued. Even now, ten years after, a lot of people remember that I have an Olympic medal, and they wouldn't necessarily remember my results on ATP (Tour). From the last point that you win you think of all the hardships you had in your career – all the hard work, education, and sacrifices you have to make in order to achieve something that big. You know, coming from a war-torn country, playing under tough conditions, your family sacrificing a lot for you to play the sport you love, it's incredible. It is something that is hard to explain. When it's Christmas, when I'm home we have this small gathering of all the athletes from Split and we meet, we chat, and we have great friendships. We remember the times of the Olympic Games. We're still doing it and not only tennis – water polo, handball, swimming – we still get together around Christmas time because everybody is home. You grow so many friendships from the Olympics. My parents were super nice and they made a room for all my trophies and my Olympic medal is there. From the emotional side I think it has to be up there with Davis Cup. It's definitely one of the biggest achievements in my short career. I think the Olympic Games, especially today, is one of the highest achievements in tennis. In my opinion even higher than the Grand Slams and it's an experience you never forget. I van: It was unbelievable, especially because of everything that happened after that. I felt like that moment kind of changed my career because everything after that was unbelievable. I was ranked 20 or something and after that I just kept climbing up. After a year and a half, I was No. 3 in the world, so that was the moment that definitely changed my career. I got confidence and the realisation that I had already won something important. I was 25 back then so I was not really that young, but I realised that I can really do something big. When I went to New York after, I remember talking to people about winning an Olympic medal. You realise how much it means to the regular public. For tennis players, of course it was big, but you can talk to anyone in the world that didn't know anything about tennis and tell them that you have an Olympic medal. They respect that, they see the value of it. From huge disappointment from losing the semifinal where Mario and I were favourites – we were supposed to win and we lost to the Chilean team [Fernando Gonzalez and Nicolas Massu] – to come back and be able to beat the Indians [Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes] was fantastic. We ended up getting a ceremony at 3:30am which, as you can imagine, wasn't full, but still emotional. I really don't like to say (that) this is one, this is two, this is three. I like to talk about the most important things in my career. That's the Davis Cup, the Indian Wells title, reaching No. 3 in the world and an Olympic medal. These are the four things that I am most proud of and that I like to talk about. I think the Olympic Games, especially today, is one of the highest achievements in tennis.

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