'Roger Federer would have been the most technically skilled', says sport legend

• Tennis News
• Roger Federer

Fans of the world of tennis have been waiting for the return of Swiss legend Roger Federer for months now. The winner of 20 Grand Slam titles was absent both for the pandemic and above all for a double surgery that kept him out for almost the whole of 2020 and everyone was waiting for him to return.

Surprisingly, however, Roger announced a few weeks ago that he will not take part in the Australian Open 2021 and that his return to the field is again postponed. However, the former Brazilian tennis player André Sa revealed the real reason why Federer will not be present in Melbourne: "he told me 'I have 39 years, four children and 20 Grand Slam tournaments.

For me it is not the time to be away from my family for over five weeks." In fact, the real reason that led Roger to give up would not be the physical conditions but the rigid impositions that the organizers of the Australian Open have made with the 'bubble' and quarantine for tennis players.

Paradoxically, these phrases reassured Roger Federer fans, worried about the long absence and physical condition of their favorite. In an interview with a French publication, track and field legend Stephane Caristan admitted that just as he reckons NBA legend LeBron James would have achieved similar greatness as a decathlete, he thinks that the twenty-time Grand Slam winner would have won just as many laurels crossing 110-meter hurdles.

Caristan on Roger Federer's skills

“Roger Federer is a very good technician. It is not because he is my favorite athlete, but I will have to put him on 110 meters hurdles. Or by pole or length,” Stephane Caristan said.

He added that of the ‘Big Three’ – the combined moniker for Federer and peers Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic – he considers the Swiss to be the most ideally suited to take on those set of hurdles.

“I think of the ‘Big Three’ , he would have been the most technically skilled. He has the profile of the new 110 meter runners who amazed me, that is to say to necessarily very stretched in legs but technically sharp enough to compensate,” Caristan said.

While his body seems to have slowed down at 39, the Swiss Master has had a long and incredibly successful career, interspersed with a few injury-induced breaks. He dropped a broad hint of not traveling to Melbourne Park this year during a recent awards night in his homeland, saying he wasn’t sure if his knees would recover in time for the year’s first Grand Slam.