LI NA, THE REBEL TENNISTA NUMBER ONE IN CHINA TELLS THE NEW YORK TIMES

When last May at Roland Garros – the most important tennis tournament played on outdoor clay courts in Paris – the Chinese tennis player Li Na was surprisingly eliminated in the second round by the American Bethanie Mattek- Sands, a reporter for China’s Xinhua news agency said Li Na, in the conference after the game, to provide fans of his country an explanation for his disappointing performance . “I lost a game , that’s all ,” said Li . ” I also have to get on my knees and bow your head ?” .
Li Na is the strongest tennis player of Chinese always is the first Chinese to win an international tournament in the professional circuit WTA (Women’s Tennis Association ) and the first and only one to have won a Grand Slam tournament (that of Roland Garros, in , 2011, defeating Francesca Schiavone ) . It has millions of fans in his country, but he has a difficult relationship with the press and with the Chinese ” national sports system ” ( juguo tizhi ) , who left in 2008. He’s a resolute and combative , with a great personality and has a degree in journalism , a tattoo on his chest and a husband who snores , tennis , too , that for a long time acted as a coach, when Li Na decided to abandon the system Chinese sports and manage his life and his sports career .
It’s a good story, and he told the magazine of the New York Times a few weeks ago . These days Li Na has committed the U.S. Open , the last of the four major tournaments of the year (the ” Grand Slam “), where no Chinese had never reached this far : defeated Russia’s Ekaterina Makarova in the quarter and will face Friday Serena Williams in the semifinals , defending champion and number one in the world rankings.

Li Na is very popular and very popular in China, and in general is one of China’s most famous athletes in the world, along with former basketball player Yao Ming and Liu Xiang , gold medalist at the Athens Olympics in the 110 meter hurdles . On Weibo , the Chinese social network similar to Twitter , has more than 21 million followers ( on Twitter , so to speak , Rafael Nadal has almost 5 million and Serena Williams just under 4 million). His final victory at Roland Garros – June 4, 2011 , the day of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre – was followed on television by 116 million Chinese viewers , most of the viewers of the Super Bowl ( the final of the football ) of that ‘ year , and nearly twice the population of Italy.
The site of Chinese sports Sohu Sports calculated that the victory at Roland Garros would have earned to Li Na 234 times the annual salary of a Chinese worker , and said, ” all well-deserved .” The news site Bloomberg wrote that he would become the second richest sports after Russian Maria Sharapova , today , according to the New York Times , is the third after Sharapova and Serena Williams ( all tennis players ) , who meanwhile rejoined the circuit after a long injury. Li Na , former spokesperson for Rolex and Nike , shook new trade agreements with brands such as Mercedes -Benz , Samsung and Häagen -Dazs , which led to its annual earnings , according to the New York Times, to a figure of around $ 18 million .
Li Na owes its popularity mainly to the size of the public and the Chinese market, writes the New York Times, and ” would not have been among the three highest paid sports in the world, had she been born in Chile, Chad or Chicago ” and was was equally strong . Even the Women’s Tennis Association has taken advantage of the popularity of Li Na to expand in the East : five years ago the official WTA tournaments organized in China were two , in 2014 – thanks to the entry of the tournament in Wuhan , a city of Li Na , 4 million and a half inhabitants – international tournaments held in China will be eight .