CNN interview - sania

Sania spoke exclusively to CNN-IBN’s sports editor Gaurav Kalra about her road to recovery and many more.

Here are the excerpts from the interview:

Sania: Few tests are done. It is heeling and it will take few more weeks. It is making progress, it stops hurting but as soon as I start playing it again starts hurting. There is a different problem to what it was when I had a surgery. It was a bit disappointing that it really took off at the Olympic but this is sports I guess.

Gaurav Kalra: Yes Sania, it has been one of those years, you haven’t had a chance to play much and as soon as you have gone to the court there have been injury concerns. Has it been very frustrating to have gone through 2008 and experienced all of this?

Sania: Yes, of course and especially when you are probably playing the best tennis of your life arguably and you have the potential to may be have the best year of your life and then you are walked down by injuries, of course it is very frustrating. But, I guess as an athlete you know, you have learnt that you have to deal with these things and it is going to be a part of our lives. We keep playing after putting ourselves through so much every day, physically and mentally but yes it is frustrating to be watching sitting out of grand slams and having to have retired the Olympic.

Gaurav Kalra: What do you make up these? Abhinav's performance at the Olympic, winning a gold medal for the first time an individual gold medal for an Indian and then the boxers and wrestlers, they all making us proud?

Sania: Yes, I think it has been probably arguably our best Olympics ever. We had a gold, two bronzes and in sports we probably least expected something. May be in shooting we did expect but these people have just prove to everyone of us here that if they can do it anyone can and I think it is a new sense of inspiration for lot many people who may have just started to think of taking up boxing as their career or taking up shooting or wrestling for that matter. I would personally like to congratulate Abhinav Bindra, Sushil Kumar and Vijender Kumar for what they have done. They have shown us the new light and it inspired me and I am sure it has inspired the whole of India as well.

Gaurav Kalra: What do you make up this? Nadal vs Federer, the first one is the big tennis rivalry that everyone is talking about. We got a sense from the viewers listerning to you that you kind of preferred Roger Federer over Rafael Nadal?

Sania: I think Roger doesn’t matter if he is number 2 in the world today, it does not matter if he becomes 100 in the world, he is still going to be Roger Federer, he has been Roger Federer. I am very bias so I am going to say Roger Federer will win.

Gaurav Kalra: Look at the records Sania.

Sania: He (Federer) is a genius and like you said he surprised everyone in the Olympic by winning the doubles gold so you don’t know he might again come up and win it again but on a serious note Rafa is playing really well and probably he is playing the best he has ever played and yes it is going to be really hard for Roger to beat him but at the end of the day he is the King.