The Hindu : Sport / Tennis : Hail Roddick the hero

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Monday, May 03, 2004

Sport

Sport - Tennis

Hail Roddick the hero

By Alix Ramsay

ROME, MAY 2. Andy Roddick, the world's No. 2 tennis player, was hailed as a hero on Saturday after helping guests to escape a fatal blaze in a five-star hotel in Rome.

Three people lost their lives in the fire, which engulfed the top floors of the Parco dei Principi, near the Villa Borghese park in central Rome.

Roddick, 21, who is in Italy to compete in the Rome Masters tournament, helped to lead guests to safety after the fire broke out at 5 a.m. on Saturday. His American Davis Cup team-mate, Robby Ginepri, 21, said: "We didn't find Andy for a while because he couldn't get out. He was on the sixth floor, so he stayed on the balcony of his room. Some people were on the seventh floor, and he helped them come down because the ladder on the fire truck didn't reach that far. His balcony was enormous, so he let people come in there."

"There was a ton of smoke in the corridor and you couldn't even see more than five feet ahead of you. Everyone was running frantically, trying to find the exit. We saw flames coming from three different sides of the building. Windows were shattering, with glass everywhere.''

Ginepri said he had been on the fourth floor, "right above the fire''. He said: "I'm actually staying with my coach, John Thompson, and luckily he heard it. I took a sleeping pill last night, so I didn't hear anything. People were yelling in the hallway `fire, fire' and he thought it was kids doing a prank at the beginning, but they kept on yelling.''

Sjeng Schalken, the Dutch No. 1, climbed down from the sixth to the fifth floor before being plucked to safety by firemen using a crane.

Marat Safin, the former U.S. Open champion, and his girlfriend were trapped in a corridor but managed to escape. Like many players, he was left with nothing more than the clothes he stood up in.

Roddick's racquets are said to have melted in the heat. The shaken players later rejoiced in their lucky escapes as they prepared for the tournament to start on Sunday.

Britain's Tim Henman, who had booked himself into a different hotel, said that his stringer, who was staying at the Parco, did not hear an alarm but looked out of the window to see flames from the building. "Ron said that he grabbed his racquet bag, because he'd got my racquets, Lleyton Hewitt's racquets and all his passports.'' — Copyright, The Telegraph Group, London, 2004

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