To the New York Times: «To be the best you have to be obsessed and selfish. The line between bad and good selfishness is thin.”
Miami (United States) 03/29/2024 – Miami Open / photo Imago/Image Sport in the photo: Grigor Dimitrov ONLY ITALY
The obsession. It always comes back, when champions try to explain their success or that of others. The cursed-blessed obsession. Grigor Dimitrov understood this very late, and in his interview with the New York Times he also talks about “selfishness”. He who as a young man was “baby Fed”, little Federer. For the elegant movements, the fluidity of the blows. A nickname he has always hated: “Honestly, at first I found it funny, and then I started… not to hate it but I didn’t like it because it didn’t make sense. We’re so different and we have some similarities but we’re really not the same people and I think that was so unnecessary. One wish I would have for a kid is not to be compared to someone. I think it was probably one of the worst things I’ve had to deal with in my career. I never liked it and it never brought me anything good. Of course I’m flattered, but I’ve always wanted to be myself.”
Dimitrov in “old age” is experiencing a second youth better than the first. He understood the obsession: “To be the best in this sport you have to be obsessed, that’s how it is. To the point where you don’t have much margin for error. I think I’m getting my bearings with things better, and I also know that right now I’m much closer to the end than the beginning, and that also gives you a very different perspective.”
They have talked about him throughout his career as someone who is too good, without the ruthlessness needed to win. “But if I didn’t have it, I wouldn’t be here right now. And I think that to have it something must have happened, like a bad experience that pushes you over the edge, that then you say ok, now we’re here. I had it, of course. Both on and off the pitch. I have had many of these experiences and I am very grateful for them. Some have been extremely tough but it’s part of the game and part of life. I always connect the game, our sport, to our life. I think they go hand in hand.”
“Selfishness for an athlete is obvious, but the line between bad and good selfishness is thin. I could have been more selfish with some decisions I had to make, but I’m contradicting myself a little because I’ve always wanted to grow as a person, and now I’m complaining. Ruthlessness, of course, is like that. You want to win. You can be the nicest guy off the pitch, but on the pitch you have to be lethal…”.
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