THE PAIN

Moments of glory attract the biggest sporting headlines, but what is often forgotten is the pain involved in the result, or in just being part of a sporting life.

Many sportspeople endure tough moments, and some of the more excruciating are discussed in this opening chapter. One of the most revealing stories of this collection is the first, where Jessica Halloran investigates the fraught relationship between tennis player Jelena Dokic and her father, Damir. Jessica flew to Miami to interview Jelena, who revealed the extent of the physical abuse she had suffered at the hands of her father. There were ramifications after the story was published. Damir threatened to blow up the Australian embassy in Belgrade. He was later arrested and jailed. The article won the Australian Sports Commission's award for best feature in 2009.

Michael Cowley's account of how Swans captain Jarrad McVeigh and his wife Clementine coped with losing their daughter in 2011 is another poignant story.

'The Swans skipper played out the season, but not surprisingly had not been put before the media, nor spoken in public about the ordeal,' Cowley said.

'And as far as I was concerned, he didn't need to. That was beyond football, and while of course it would be a touching, good story to get, to chase it, you felt like you were crossing the line.

'But in late January 2012, the club contacted me and told me that Jarrad wanted to sit down and chat about Luella. It was thought that as captain he would have to face the media at some point, and would be asked about the matter. So the club and Jarrad felt it would be better if he just spoke to two journalists — one from Fairfax, one from News Ltd — told his story in full and hopefully that would be the end of the matter, making it much easier for him to get on with his football.

'I wasn't sure what to expect when we sat down, but by the time I walked away an hour later, I was amazed at how open and honest, brave and emotional, Jarrad had been.'

GG

JELENA DOKIC

Jessica Halloran

Pearls fall down Jelena Dokic's back where bruises once tarnished her caramel skin. She idles on a tennis court in a ball gown, diamantes decorating the nape of her neck. She's laughing now, where hours earlier she was soberly explaining how she'd escaped the physical rage of her father, Damir.

The beatings have been rumoured about for many years, but finally Dokic, 26, has chosen to speak to Sport&Style about the pain inflicted on her by the hands of her father. She has turned down tens of thousands of dollars to confide to this magazine about how she escaped the abuse, then fell into a private hell as she attempted to recover from those traumatic years.

Once you know and hear more about her darkest days, you realise how remarkable this young woman is. As she rests on the penthouse balcony ledge, looking out at the Biscayne Bay in Florida, it's clear she's far removed from the girl she once was.

You may remember the lonely-looking teenager who never contradicted her father's words or actions no matter how outrageous they were. In 1999, when Damir was arrested after being ejected from a tournament in Birmingham for calling tennis officials 'Nazis' during her match, she explained he was just 'cheering'. In 2000, aged just 17, a stony-faced Dokic said: 'I don't care what people say and do to my Poppa — the bond between us, my mother and [brother] Savo, no one can break.'

Two years later, in October 2002, Dokic packed her bags and ran after a tournament in Europe. She slipped a letter under the door of her mother Ljiljana's hotel room. She wrote she'd had enough and would be with her boyfriend, the Formula One driver Enrique Bernoldi. A shocked Ljiljana rang Damir in Serbia — he was outraged.

On a cloudy spring day in Miami, Dokic says she had no choice but to flee what she terms 'the situation'.

From the first moment the tennis clique noticed Dokic swinging her racquet, there were murmurs of Damir abusing his daughter. In early 1997, then just 13, Dokic was urged to take action against a man who allegedly assaulted her during a junior tournament. Victorian Police investigated, but she did not take further action.

An early coach who had a hotel room next door to Damir and Jelena heard her being slapped around. Her Fed Cup teammate Rennae Stubbs has said she saw bruises left by Damir. During the Sydney Olympics, Stubbs pleaded for Dokic to stay in the athletes village. 'Stay here, he can't get in here, he can't get to the courts,' Stubbs said. Dokic replied she was afraid for her family and couldn't leave them.

How did she survive this? Dokic lets out a tense sigh before answering, but her face remains stoic. 'I left when I was 19,' Dokic says. 'But there was nothing anyone could really do. It was up to me ... It's the only thing you can really do.' Her dark eyes pop in surprise when her actions are described as 'courageous'. She says finding the will to leave was easy. 'There was no other way I could deal with the situation I was in ... I decided to do it ... The following three, four years I really struggled mentally. But if I had to do it again I'd do it — maybe sooner.'

She admits she thought life would be easy once she escaped the emotional and physical abuse of her father. But while at first Dokic felt a freedom, the following months brought long periods of depression. Months where she would sleep for up to 18 hours a day, wake up, eat excessively, then return to bed.

'I fell apart emotionally, mentally,' Dokic says, in her curt way.

'I couldn't handle life — the way it was — let alone tennis.'

Dokic didn't just leave behind an abusive father; she left a family unit. While she eventually resumed communication with Ljiljana, she did not speak to her nine-year-old brother, Savo, for two years. 'When I left, I left everything behind. 'No one was there to come with me. I was alone.

'There was a period where there was nothing that could make me happy. Nothing I could do. Nothing anyone could do. I just wanted to get out of my own skin. I wanted somebody else's life.'

While there have been traumatic days in the past where she wanted to be somebody else, at the Australian Open in January [2009] there was no doubt who Dokic wanted to be. On the eve of the Open she was a wildcard with a troubled reputation, but her intoxicating resurgence soon won the country's heart. 'The whole thing got really emotional for me after the first-round win,' Dokic says.

The Jelena wave of love started to roll in round two, when she knocked out her first seeded opponent, Anna Chakvetadze (No. 17). 'That was really huge,' Dokic says. 'It was the first time in a long time that I played on a big court, in front of a big crowd.' Then she took down Caroline Wozniacki (11) before knocking out Alisa Kleybanova (29). She had us all at fever pitch when she almost defeated world No. 3 Dinara Safina in the quarter-finals.

Dokic may not have made it through to the semi-finals that day, but she won over the Australian public after saying how unconditionally apologetic she was for the past. She entered that grand slam without a tennis uniform and exited with a $1 million sponsorship from an airline. She has also recently signed a deal with Lacoste.

Dokic's recent on-court success was how it was always supposed to be for the daughter of immigrants who moved to Australia from Serbia in 1994. Originally they lived on social-security payments. Her mother worked in a bread factory in Sydney, while Damir, a former boxer and truck driver, dreamt of coaching his daughter to tennis greatness. 'We came because life was hard [in Serbia] and the tennis was better here.'

In 1999, at 16, she burst on to the tennis scene when she thrashed world No. 1 Martina Hingis 6–2, 6–0 at Wimbledon. The Dokic family celebrated in their cheap London hotel room by eating bread and cheese. At this stage ranked 129, Dokic's career soon blossomed, and she reached a career high ranking of No. 4 in 2002, winning five tournaments on the way.

In Damir's eyes, all that hard work he had her doing as a little girl was paying off. As an 11-year-old, she would rise four days a week at 6 am to commute by train from the family's small flat in Fairfield, in Sydney's west, to the White City tennis venue in Paddington. She would always be the first at training; smashing, not hitting, the ball against the wall to while away the time.

'Her work ethic was superior to the boys,' says an early coach, Craig Miller. 'Coaches were impressed by her ability to train without stopping, turning down water breaks, because of her dedication to her game.' But her training partners noticed she never laughed. She was robotic. Her father would tell her to 'stop smiling' during training and 'not to be friendly on court'.

When asked what her memories are of being a little girl, Dokic initially says she doesn't want to talk about it. Later she does. She says she remembers it being painfully tough not being able to speak English well, and being very quiet despite having a burning desire to be loud. 'I'm an Aries,' she says. 'I'm full of energy, but because I was in a difficult situation I was closed, shy. I was not talking or smiling that much. Maybe people thought I was arrogant.'

As for that fierce face on court that we still often see, that was also a product of her childhood. 'I had to be emotionless. There were a lot of things going on; I had to deal with everything at the same time. Maybe that's why I cracked in the end. Why things went wrong.'

Those 'things' always involved her relationship with Damir. His list of offences is long. Publicly, she constantly defended her 'Poppa'. But it was Damir's performance over the price of a meal at New York's Flushing Meadows in 2000 that gives the deepest insight into his extremely volatile behaviour. 'Ten dollars for a piece of fish — it's criminal,' Damir shouted in the US Open players cafe with Dokic by his side. From there the rage grew. The half-hour torrent of abuse saw him spit the phrase 'f — king US Open' at least 20 times. He called Women's Tennis Association CEO Bart McGuire a 'gangster'. He lunged at his daughter and violently ripped her competitor accreditation from her neck. He was eventually ejected while crying out: 'Fight me, fight me.' Two hours later, a journalist called Dokic at her New York hotel room. Sobbing, she dutifully translated for her father. 'We have to fight the Jewish in New York,' Dokic quoted her father as saying. 'We're not scared to fight. I don't care if they put a bomb in the plane.'

It's a miracle Dokic is still playing after enduring such maniacal episodes. 'I've been through a lot worse than anybody on the tour,' she says, quietly sipping a soft drink. 'When you go through stuff like that, playing a tennis match is easy. Even if I lose, or don't play well, I'll be disappointed, but it's not the end of the world. When I win today, it's so much more satisfying.'

When she escaped, Dokic also left behind a fortune: career earnings in the millions. So, while her mother currently lives in a bedsit in Fairfield on a pension of $550 a week, her father lives on a million dollar property in Belgrade. Dokic says she doesn't care that his property, dotted with thousands of plum and pear trees, was bought with her money.

'When I left I wasn't as well off as I could have been, for obvious reasons,' Dokic says. 'It was just another thing I had to deal with; another thing that was taken away from me. I don't have feelings for material stuff. It doesn't bother me that much because I still have the ability to earn and to be financially stable. At times it was not easy, but that was the least of my worries.'

While Dokic may look like an ice princess, she is warm and kind-hearted. She's caring and vivacious. When she laughs, it is beautiful because it's such a rare sound. Her face lightens. The person responsible for this positive change in her life is Tin Bikic.

Dokic met Tin, a small, muscly Croatian man with a warm nature, in Monaco just three months after she left home in 2002. Her romance with Bernoldi had fizzled. She soon moved in with Tin and his brother Borna, who is now Dokic's coach, in Zagreb. She says that their relationship is the only 'good consistent thing' that she has had in her life so far. Tin has seen her 'go crazy'. He's endured the terrible mood swings; she'd be fine for a few hours, then sobbing for the next few. 'It went around in a circle like that,' Dokic says. Tin has also heard Damir's claims about him and his brother. 'I believe they drug her,' Damir once said. He also claimed that Tin and Borna had kidnapped Jelena. Yet it was Tin who researched depression and tried to find the right people to help her.

On reflection, Dokic, who at one stage ballooned to 83 kilograms, believes she should have taken a longer hiatus from the sport. 'We tried to find ways to get better,' Dokic says. 'Whether it be going to talk to somebody, or just talking between ourselves. [Tin] didn't know how to deal with the tennis part — whether I should play or take time off. Neither of us knew.

'We have a really good relationship. We fit together. He really helped me get through. He saw me at my worst and at my best.' When asked if he'd be interviewed, a smiling Bikic raises an index finger to his lips and says 'Shhh!'. 'He's very closed to outside people,' Dokic explains later.

Despite the hell Damir put his daughter through, Dokic has tried to reconcile with him. For 10 days the family reunited in October 2004 at his property in Vrdnik. Her father's thinking hadn't changed. He detested Tin. 'It's been impossible,' Dokic says. 'I've given up.'

It's this honesty and bravery that has made the Australian public love Dokic again. For years we were distracted by her father's antics. So now, by herself, what does she dream of becoming? She doesn't imagine she'll be remembered as a 'great'. It's a desperately hard slog for her: she's still carrying weight from her break.

'Just because I had the situation that I had and the four-year lay-off that I had, I don't think I can ever really have a 15-year career and be great,' Dokic says. 'I would like to win a grand slam. I would like to be No. 1. But just to be in the top 10, top five, it would be an unbelievable achievement.'

When asked about the troubling memories, she says they have become part of her. 'Whatever has happened, good or bad, will always stay there,' Dokic says. 'It makes you what you are.

'We can't pick who our parents are and what happens. When you have a situation like mine, you just deal with it.'

7 May 2009

I'M PROUD OF HER: DAD'S TRIBUTE TO LUELLA

Michael Cowley

Jarrad McVeigh leans forward on the couch, offering his phone for shared viewing. As he flicks through the photos of his daughter, Luella, you can hear the pride in his voice — punctuated by a gulp of emotion — and see the love in his face as he scrolls from one picture to the next.

Every father's photos are special, but these, and the accompanying memories — many painful — are all the Sydney co-captain and his wife, Clementine, now have of their baby girl.

Luella was born on July 25 last year with a serious heart condition. Four weeks later, on August 24, she lost her fight for life in Sydney's Westmead Hospital.

Speaking for the first time about the family's loss, McVeigh admits his emotions span the spectrum when looking at pictures of his daughter's month-long life.

'Sometimes I just find myself looking at them and maybe cry, or I'm happy,' he says of the photos. 'I think after every game I played at the end of the year, I'd go and sit in the toilet and just look at my phone.'

He says he's happy to be finally talking about his little girl, because he's so proud of her. 'She's touched a lot of people here at the club, a lot of people who never met her, even though she was here for only a short time,' he says.

'There was a little spirit in her that everyone who saw her could feel. She was a very strong little girl. She went through a lot of trauma with four operations and kept fighting back [but] it came to a point where there was nothing anyone could do.'