When he first kissed her, she resisted.
"You're so young...", she retorts to the Swiss player, then pimply - let's specify it.
Not intimidated, the young Roger Federer replied to him when he was "almost 18" and a half "".
"Okay, you're a baby," she snaps back.
We are in September 2000, the evening of the closing of the Summer Olympics in Sydney.
The one who still wears a half-ponytail and a choker necklace made of wooden beads has just declared his love for his compatriot four years his senior, Miroslava Vavrinec.
Did they sense then that they would never leave each other again?
And even more, that they would one day form the most unshakeable couple in professional tennis?
No doubt they had not foreseen Mirka's recurring foot injury, which prematurely ended her honorable career in April 2002 (she was then 76th player in the world).
This injury, however, marks the beginning of the story.
Their story ;
that of tennis, too.
Mirka Vavrinec becomes Roger Federer's agent, his right arm, his mentor.
His strong arrival in the life of the most promising player of his generation is causing a stir.
"It's true that at the beginning, it spoke a lot about Mirka's physique
(far from the standards of "wags", Ed)
and her taste for money", slips a former close friend of the couple to
Parisian
.
This declaration of the young woman in 2003, in the middle of the Wimbledon tournament, "when he wins, it's as if I won too", is not for nothing.
But the facts are there.
"When I met her, I had zero titles, I now have 88," he told the British daily
The Guardian in 2016
.
He now has 103, at 41 years old.
Age at which he took his final retirement, announced on September 15, 2022.
"I refuse to sleep without my wife"
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Roger Federer and his girlfriend Mirka Vavrinec, in London, July 4, 2004. Tommy Hindley/Getty Images
Beyond teaching him love, Mirka teaches him work, she who has never counted her hours on the court, pushed by immigrant parents from former Czechoslovakia.
Young, she had such a "gnaque" that "if her coach had asked her to run a marathon before training, she would have done it", says René Stauffer, author of two biographies on Roger Federer, whose comments are reported in
Le
Parisien
.
"She trained five or six hours straight, book Roger Federer to the
Guardian
in 2016. She was tough, and she taught me how to work."
They married on April 11, 2009 in Riehen, near Basel, Switzerland.
Their twins Myla Rose and Charlene Riva were born in July of the same year.
Leo and Lenny, their twin boys, were born five years later, in 2014. Together, the six of them travel the world and play on clay, grass and synthetic courts.
His daughters, who have just turned 10, will enter a Swiss college when the time comes.
So far, a nanny and a tutor travel with them and the boys.
Because Roger Federer is particularly keen on one thing: "I refuse not to sleep in the same bed as my wife, he told the
Sunday Times
in November 2018. We wanted to have children, but my dream was to first to be with her, and in the same room."
Mirka and Roger, the photo album of an unwavering couple
Mirka and Roger Federer, an unshakable couple
In images, in pictures
See the slideshow25 photos
See the slideshow25 photos
Bradley Cooper and "Crybaby"
Full screen
Meet Bradley Cooper's New Girlfriend: It Makes Sense.
(Mirka Federer greeting Irina Shayk, Wimbledon, July 6, 2016.) Getty Images
This explaining that, rare are the times that Mirka has missed a match played by her husband.
Still in the stands, impassive, silent.
Many see her as a submissive and boring wife, wondering why this couple has mismatched exteriors.
Her "lady" looks don't help.
Neither does her "disconnect" - she doesn't have a Twitter account, nor an Instagram account.
On closer inspection, however, Ms. Federer is still well surrounded.
On video, Mirka Federer, first supporter of her husband
Anna Wintour is traditionally at his side for Wimbledon, Bradley Cooper introduces him to all his girlfriends, she shares glasses of ice water with Tiger Woods, David Beckham
hugs
her ... At the wedding of Pippa Middleton and James Matthews, in May 2018, the Federers were in the front row.
"Mirka knows how to stay in touch with everyone," adds Roger Federer to the
New York Times,
she maintains our friendships perfectly.” And their enmities? annoyed by the noise coming from the stands and more precisely from the Federer clan just before the service, Mirka launches a scathing: "Crybaby", "whiner" in French. We all have a dark side...
40 years in Ibiza
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Mirka Federer and her children: twins Myla and Charlene, and twins Leo and Lennart, at Wimbledon, July 16, 2017. Abaca
That of Miroslava Vavrinec did not show up often.
"He's a very nice person but who protects his 'guy' as much as possible", sums up the former Swiss professional tennis player, Marc Rosset, at
Le Parisien
.
If she participated in making Roger Federer a champion, she also helped to keep him at the top, accompanying him everywhere, never showing possible weariness.
While Roger Federer began, in recent years, to understand his extraordinary career with a little more relaxation.
Mirka, for sure, had something to do with it.
“If she no longer wanted him to play, he would stop right away,” biographer René Stauffer told Le
Parisien at the time.
.
In 2018, while his main opponents, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic in the lead, were competing for the trophies of the Madrid and Rome Masters, he was also celebrating his wife's 40th birthday in Ibiza.
Like a first stone in the building of his next life;
in the shadow of Mirka, this one, perhaps.
This article originally published on May 28, 2019 has been updated.
