Ashleigh Barty: Getting fit in time for Wimbledon “Nothing short of a miracle”

The hip injury that ruled Ashleigh Barty out of Roland-Garros in the second round nearly kept her from playing Wimbledon as well, but the newly crowned Wimbledon champion says that a bit of divine intervention helped her get healthy in time for the main draw.

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After Saturday’s 6-3, 6-7(4), 6-3 victory over Karolina Pliskova in the Ladies’ Singles final, Barty revealed just how close she had come to not being able to make the cut at Wimbledon. She said her team didn’t even tell her how slim the odds of her making it to full health before the Championships were, in order to keep her positive as she worked to rehab her hip injury.

Barty: My team didn’t tell her how bad the odds of recovery were

“They kept a lot of cards close to their chest and didn’t tell me a lot of the odds, didn’t tell me a lot of the information that they’d got from other specialists,” Barty told reporters after the final. “There weren’t too many radiologists in Australia who had seen my injury. In a sense, it was a two-month injury. Being able to be able to play here at Wimbledon was nothing short of a miracle.”

Barty says the start had to align in order for her to achieve her lifelong goal on Saturday at SW19.

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“I think them not telling me that just proved how much we were against the odds,” she said. “I think now to be playing pain-free through this event was incredible. It’s funny, sometimes the stars align, you can think positively, you can plan, and sometimes the stars do align, you can chase after your dreams.”

Full trust in team as Olympics and US Open loom

Asked if she’d be ready for the physical challenges that lie in wait over the next few months, Barty told the press she has complete faith in her team, especially after the way they pulled her through the Wimbledon fortnight.

“I think the fact that we were physically able to get through the past fortnight has been exceptional,” she said. “I had the most incredible team of people around me. I put full trust in them, in knowing that they do everything absolutely possible to give myself trust in my body. I think being able to prove that this fortnight has been incredible.

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“I certainly have no fears about my fitness. Of course, some things will happen. That’s normal. That’s natural. That’s life of being an athlete. But I know that I’ve got the very best team around me to prepare me in a way as best as we can.”