A 15-year-old tennis champion has fulfilled her dream of meeting the best players in the world, after she performed the all important coin-toss at Saturday’s Wimbledon Ladies Singles Final.
Chloe Ball-Hopkins, from Kingswood, near Wotton-under-Edge, has a rare muscle-wasting disease called nemaline myopathy which causes weakness in the arm, leg, throat, and face muscles and has used a wheelchair since primary school. A tennis champion in her own right, Chloe was invited to toss the coin at the prestigious sporting event by Sue Barker, president of the Muscular Dystrophy Campaign, the charity fighting to find cures for her muscle-wasting condition.
Speaking about the coin toss and meeting players Maria Sharapova and Petra Kvitova, who went on to win the championship, Chloe said: "I really love tennis so this was like a dream come true. I can’t imagine my life without sport and hope to make a living doing it when I’m older.
"It’s was quite nerve-wracking but luckily everything when smoothly and it ended up being one of the best days of my life."
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