AUSTRALIAN OPEN

January 18, 2005

Nathalie Dechy

THE MODERATOR: Questions for Nathalie, please.

NATHALIE DECHY: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, how can you be happy when you see your face on the cover page and talking about doping? I mean, it's never good for me. And I was really upset when I saw that this morning. I think it's pretty -- it's really bad. I'm really upset about it, and I think the Belgium government did some really bad job about this. But then it was my day match, so I really wanted to focus on my match and forget about these stories. But for sure I was really upset.

NATHALIE DECHY: I hope so. I think it's already gone on too many days already. I mean, these stories start on Saturday, and we are on Tuesday. I just want to close it and then play my matches as normal.

NATHALIE DECHY: Well, I think we deserve an apology from the guy. I mean, you cannot say anything like this -- you cannot say some stuff like this, saying it's one of these girl. I mean, this is terrible. This is terrible for me. I was feeling really upset. And I think that this guy has to do a statement, for sure.

NATHALIE DECHY: No. Well, kind of yes and no. I think I was still thinking about this stuff. As I said, it's never good to have these kind of stories. I mean, there's so many things coming up in a Grand Slam, so many people. It's already hard to focus for your first round. And seeing this kind of stuff, it's not good. So when you see yesterday on the news you're part of the girls... And I always feel like I was very clear, I always feel good about myself. It was pretty bad. Yeah, for sure, it was not good for the first match. But I handled it good and I'm through the second round and I want to focus on the tennis again.