History

By Pierre Cantin
Date: 31/1/2001

A brief history of how Jelena-dokic.com went from a little fan page about a young Australian prospect in January 1999 to become a leading information provider about a futur #1 player and superstar of the WTA. 

Hello Jelena Fans ! Even though this page isn't that old yet, it still has a very interesting story behind it ! I started doing this page in january 1999 after hearing about Jelena's tremendous talent and because she had been doing great at the Hopman Cup where she defeated Aranxta Sanchez-Vicario (who was #5 at the time). At that time, I also started my own mailing list which had probably about 15 members:) The page was at kousa.com/dokic (I'm trying to be optimistic !).

I continued updating the page even though Jelena was not playing very often due to the WTA age restriction rules. She had not been very lucky in her draws playing Hingis in herfirst ever grand slam tournament, the Australian Open. The came Wimbledon! Jelena was placed into qualifications which would give her a chance to play some matches. Then, when it was announced that Jelena would play Hingis, I was so sad.. Not that i didn't beleive jelena was talented but Martina never losses in the 1st round ! Never except that one time !! Jelena defeated Hingis 6-1, 6-0 and became very popular instantly ! I rember beating my record of visitors by over 1000 visits that day !!! (my previous record was about 25!!) From then on, Alain offered me his help with the mailing list, I gave him a shot and wow the best decision I've made to this date for this page!We bought the domain name jelena-dokic.com later in the year and since and growed to over 375 members of the mailing list and over 150 visitors/day even when she's not playing ! I guess I can't say thank you enough to all of you for making this page what it is now ! 

Then came 2000, a year where expectations were high for Jelena and many people felt that Jelena might be a one time star! Well Jelena showed them wrong with great performances including a semifinal at Wimbledon! Through good and bad stuff, Jelena started being known throughout the world both for her on-court and off-court events. In 2000, Jelena-dokic.com continued to be seen as a reference page for Jelena fans and that is due to Alain's great work on covering all Jelena's events as well as all the fans who have been sending us photos, news and everything you thought could be useful! At the end of 2000, the page had about 800 members on the mailing list and had very impressive traffic statistics. During August, Jelena-dokic.com received over 24,000 visitors, certainly a very impressive figure when we consider how much better Jelena will become in the next years... Becomming the #1 player is something very well within reach, she has shown capacities to play with every top player knocking Hingis and Venus Williams among others!

When looking at our objectives for 2001, we had no idea we would receive an offer from Rivals, the leading Sports network to join their network. That was truly a huge step for this page as it meant more photos, better coverage and much more things to expect for the next years. And it was a great move as it gave credibility as well as an opportunity for thousands of members accessing the Rivals network to tune to Jelena-dokic.com if they were interested in tennis.. But unfortunatly, things did not turn out to be so perfect a few months later.. Although Rivals was having more traffic than ever, it was also suffering from the Dotcom crash and struggling to maintain the basics service.. as it became clear to me that they did not see their future through tennis, I did announce a move back to our own server...

It certainly was not an easy decision to take as the move would not be an easy thing to do but I'm glad we did it.. The drop in visitors was not as big as we could have feared and by early 2002, we were ready to open up a new year with Jelena looking to enter the top 5! And if 24,000 had been the record previously for visitors in a month, that is simply nothing compared to the 107,000 who visited in June 2002!!! For the first time, Jelena-dokic.com had welcomed over 100,000 visitors! The page was also improving in quality with great articles now being produced by Todd Spiker, Gerhard Grundhammer and Glyn James with (very) rare articles written by myself.. We also had great help with photos from Nicolas Meunier and others.. All these people know there responsibles for the evolution of this page since its first days in 1999...