21/03/2012 11:01 CEST - Rassegna internazionale

La favola della Kleybanova (Daily Mail)

Alisa Kleybanova's comeback just 10 months after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's lymphoma was already remarkable enough, before she turned it into a winning one at the Sony Ericsson Open in Miami. On Tuesday, in her first tour match since returning from a break from the sport to battle the disease, the 26-year-old Russian beat Sweden's Johanna Larsson in the first round of the prestigious tournament.

It was an incredible performance from Kleybanova, in the tournament as a wild card, as she battled back from a set down to win 2-6 6-3 6-2 over the world number 64 in a match lasting over two hours. But Kleybanova's fighting spirit has never been questioned since she bravely announced she was to undergo a course of treatment at a hospital in Perugia which specialised in the disease, a form of cancer which affects the white blood cells.

Kleybanova, who reached a career-high of 20th in the world rankings early in 2011, revealed in a pre-tournament press conference this week that she was so keen to return to the sport she had started practising again as early as February, just seven months after her initial announcement. She said: 'Since I was a kid I've been used to hard work and discipline, and there are lots of things you have to overcome when you do this. All your life you have to learn to deal with things by yourself.

'When you have a huge problem, you're used to it - even though this was completely different to anything I am used to, I was still very mentally motivated to overcome it, which obviously helped a lot. 'It has been almost a year since I've been on the tour and things have probably improved and changed, but I have a huge motivation to live 100 per cent every day of my life.'