KEY POINTS:
It's maybe the worst thing about sport - how we lionise our stars and forget the human cost. The retirement of Justine Henin last week underlined the point.
Henin, the tiny Belgian with the amazingly smooth backhand (John McEnroe says it is the best he has seen in
tennis, men's or women's), has retired at 25, saying: "My life as a woman starts now."
It is sad the famously icy and closed Henin should say such a thing.
Her life, it seems clear, hasn't been that of a woman to her but something else. It says a lot about life at the top of an international sport and the focus applied to that life. Henin has always kept her heart and emotions bottled up tighter than the contents of a Stella Artois but it is plain her ruptured personal life has cost her dearly.
Her mother and sister died when she was young, her sister Florence to a hit and run driver; her mother Francoise to cancer. A favoured nephew died as an infant. She fell out with her family, leaving home when they disagreed on her choice of man and with those familiar tennis-parent issues of control and money left in the dust of her departure.
She left without a backward glance, leaving the money and starting again; coldly relegating her family to the realms of the forgotten as she focused fiercely on her tennis.
Coach Carlos Rodriguez said her father Jose had wanted to "appropriate" her and Henin herself said: "It was not Pierre-Yves my family didn't like; it was simply the idea of there being anyone in my life.
"When I met Pierre-Yves [Hardenne], I thought at last, 'you can be happy'." She split with her husband after four years - and the hyphenated Henin-Hardenne name reverted to its lonely predecessor, signalling a woman without a man, a family and many of things that can denote womanhood.
Small wonder the Belgian presented such a chilly face at press conferences and interviews, where attempts to prise open the door of her personal life could result in the conversation being abruptly terminated.
She could also appear brutish with fellow players, the best-known being that raised hand signal in the 2003 semifinal of the French Open - a signal that was supposed to tell Serena Williams to pause instead of serve. When Williams didn't see the signal and served anyway, she double-faulted and an ice-cool Henin opportunistically took the point. . . and won the match.
She was also not beyond damning with faint praise - as she did when Amelie Mauresmo took the Australian Open crown in 2006 when Henin pulled out of the final after losing the first set heavily; defaulting early in the second set claiming a stomach problem brought on by anti-inflammatory pills.
The media - including this writer - gave her a drubbing for that. The little fighter who never gave in tanked it on that occasion and she made it worse by giving Mauresmo little credit for her victory. It smelled of sour grapes and an curious surrender by a player whose grit and determination was almost legendary.
But it is now obvious that her tennis was not just the quest for fame that started at Roland Garros when, as a little girl, she went to see Steffi Graf with her mum. Her tennis was a weapon she used against the rest of the world; and other players.
She wasn't supposed to be a factor in these days of women's power tennis - the little Belgian with the ultra-mobility, the almost-unquenchable spirit and that glorious backhand and courtcraft.
She should have been blasted off the court, as Swiss Martina Hingis eventually was by the big hitters. But she had speed, accuracy and no little power of her own - and she had that hard, hard shell masking the inner tragedies of her life and making the will to forget also the will to win.
Not for Justine Henin the pretty face or the sexy skirts and frilly knickers of say, an Anna Kournikova or a Maria Sharapova. What Henin won, she won by playing tennis. While players like Serena Williams forgot their talent and faffed around, playing instead at being movie stars or, God help us, dress designers - worrying more about their new season's bikini than their backhand - Henin forged on.
She is the first woman to retire as world No 1. She won seven Grand Slam tournaments (including four of the last five French Opens and all the majors except Wimbledon); she won 41 LTA tournaments and nearly US$20 million in an 11-year career. Last year, after splitting from her husband, she still won 10 out of the 14 tournaments she entered.
Her form has slipped badly this year and it was because she had reconciled with her family; drawn back into their embrace by settling all their differences.
Suddenly, the need for the armour-plating was gone; the need for success; to show she could achieve by being just Justine was gone. The drive had lost its power train.
So she called it quits after more than two years of being world No 1. One of the greatest female tennis players? Maybe her lack of a Wimbledon negates that. She will also not be remembered fondly by many fans who didn't like her perceived coldness.
But, as we say in tennis, the woman had balls. Marina Erakovic at the French Open, p54.
