NotAClue wrote:

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Pretty classy from Vika on a day when she won a tournament of her own. I like her more and more

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I have to say, she's winning me round slowly too.

Oh, and Judy Murray kept her promise to do 'the sprinkler' in Heather's honour: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFCkz1Smmuc

-- Edited by insomniacfolder on Monday 15th of October 2012 05:56:17 PM

Couldn't have happened to a nicer person. Keep going for it, Heather. We love you for it!

The Times went to town on Heather's win today:  the third leader, which I reproduce below because it's well worth it (& hope fervently I won't be done for breach of copyright for doing so!    Any typos mine!), an almost-full-page article (3) by OEM in the main paper, "Advantage Britain with another title" (accompanied by a delightful photo  - see here) & a full-page commentary. also by OEM, in the sports section, together with a separate article reflecting the thoughts of "Chairwoman Vika"!

Indian Summer

Britain's new sporting hero behaves as Britain feels sporting heroes should

A little over a year ago, Maria Sharapova described Heather Watson as "a great up-and-coming player".  Yesterday she upped and came.

In a 7-5, 5-7, 7-6 slog, Watson beat Taiwan's Chang Kai-Chen to win the Women's Tennis Association Japanese Open.  The last British woman to win a WTA singles title was Sara Gomer and that was in 1988, four years before Watson was born.

This, three weeks after Laura Robson was the runner-up in the Chinese Open and a month after Andy Murray added the US Open to his Olympic gold medal.  Suddenly, British tennis appears to be in a health as newly and surprisingly rude as British athletics or British cycling.  As the seasons turn, our glorious summer of sportrefuses to end.

Watson's triumph, even after all that, is a special one.  Thoughtful and relatively slight, and having exited both Wimbledon and the Olympics rather abruptly as a result of this, her unexpected victory was a testament to sheer skill rather than force.  Unlike Murray and perhaps Robson, Watson has until existed only on the very edge of household consciousness.  Her humility and her delight - the former attractive and the latter infectious - are perhaps the result of this.

It is nonetheless worth recognising, if only in passing, that Watson, like both Robson and Murray, has trained largely abroad, in her case in Florida.  None of this diminishes her achievement or the pride Britain can feel in it.  Still,  it is to be hoped that this new generation of overachievers can inspire not only talent, but an infrastructure that can nurture it.

Such, though, are the concerns for another day.  Britain has a new sporting hero.

I still can't believe why we have no footage of the final, especially match point. It would have been great for Hev and her family to have the full final recorded and kept for prosperity.
Vika does seem a very decent person, I see she also started following Laura on twitter after putting herself forward as a dance guest on a future video production of Laura's.
I think the best thing that you could say about Hev as a person is that she treats everyone as equal. She'll quite happily chat to anyone from a top pro to a fan, lets face it she's talked to me on several occasions.

The Grauniad's take on things.  In my edition this was the inside article where there was a big picture of her in action crossing over the centre pages of the sports section. She was also the headline of the front page of this section with another big delightful picture of her kneeeling in triumph plus another column there.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/oct/14/heather-watson-wins-japan-open-tennis