He is one of Britain’s true sporting greats who conquered the world of tennis through natural ability, a lot of hard work and innate mental toughness.
But Sir Andy Murray has rarely spoken about one of the toughest moments he ever had to overcome – the Dunblane massacre that he witnessed as an eight-year-old.
Sir Andy, who announced his plans to retire at Wimbledon this year, was a pupil at the small Scottish school where gunman Thomas Hamilton killed 16 children and one teacher in March 1996.
His brother Jamie, who was 10, was also there.
He first mentioned the horrific events in his 2008 autobiography, and then spoke publicly for the first time in a BBC documentary in 2013.
Hamilton carried out his murderous attack on five and six-year-olds in the gymnasium, just as Sir Andy’s class were heading there for the next lesson.
In the documentary, an emotional Sir Andy said it had affected him deeply but that he hoped his triumphs had given the town – population about 9,000 – something to be proud of.
At the time, you have no idea how tough something like that is, as you start to get older you realise
He said: “At the time, you have no idea how tough something like that is, as you start to get older you realise.
“It’s something I’ve never really spoken about since I went on tour, since I began getting asked a lot about it by the press, because it’s something that was obviously for all of my family, and the town.
“The thing that is nice now, the whole town, they recovered from it so well.
“It wasn’t until a few years ago that I started to research it and look into it a lot because I didn’t really want to know.
“It is just nice that I’ve been able to do something the town is proud of.”
Jamie, a tennis star in his own right, added: “It’s nice that, after all the negative publicity the town got after what happened so many years ago, that it’s able to be shown in a positive light now.
“I guess that’s a testament to the success that Andy’s had.”
In the programme, called Andy Murray: The Man Behind the Racquet, their mother Judy spoke about the horror as a parent waiting for news in the immediate aftermath.
She said: “Andy’s class were on their way to the gym, his class were the next ones in the gym. His class was stopped when somebody went up, when they heard the noise and discovered what had happened.
“I was one of hundreds of mums that were queueing up at the school gates waiting to find out what had happened, not knowing if your children were alive or not.”
