LAURA ROBSON relived her Las Vegas horror and admitted: I got really lucky.
Tennis star Robson and some friends were among the 22,000 crowd at a music festival in October when gunman Stephen Paddock opened fire from a nearby hotel, killing 58 and injuring hundreds more.
It was America’s worst shooting by a single attacker and former British No 1 Robson said: “It was a crazy, crazy thing to happen and I got really, really lucky.
“My friends got really really lucky. That’s really all I can say. I don’t really like to think about it.
“I didn’t know what was happening. I thought it was something on the stage.
“My friend, one of the girls I was with, she is from North Carolina so she was the first one to be like, ‘hang on here, that is definitely bullets’ and at which point a guy who used to work for IMG, he was running the event, he was the hero that day…
“We were really really lucky in that we were off to the side so you hear everything and stuff like that but we were on the way out anyway. So many people weren’t lucky.”
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Robson had always been due to return home to England the following day and she shut herself away to recover from her ordeal.
She said: “I just got a big hug from my mum when she picked me from the airport the next day.
“From there I was meant to go home for a while anyway which was probably really a good thing because I just spent five days in the house without really leaving.
“It was sweet really because when I got home my dogs could sense that I was a bit off so they just sat on me for five days.
“After that you have to get back to real life and back on the court.
“I’m definitely a bit more thankful [about life].”
Robson was speaking after losing her first-round doubles match with CoCo Vandeweghe at the Australian Open, where she had controversially missed the cut for qualifying in the singles event.
But the former junior Wimbledon champion is approaching 2018 in a happier frame of mind than at any time since a wrist injury threw her whole career into jeopardy four years ago.
She is working again with Dutchman Martijn Bok, who was her coach when she won junior Wimbledon in 2008, and is aiming to return to the world’s top 100 by the end of the year.
Robson said: “I feel very happy on court for the first time in a long time.
“I’m happy to be back with Martijn. I feel very happy and super-motivated.
“I felt like I was stuck in this spot where I wasn’t getting any better. I couldn’t pinpoint what I was doing wrong and why I felt so bad on court, why I was so unhappy in practice and in matches.
“It was getting a bit overwhelming. To change my whole scenery and get Martijn back and spend a bit more time with my family at the end of the year, it just made a difference.
“From whenever I got here, Boxing Day or something, I’ve felt a lot lighter on court and a lot happier.”
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