Clijsters finally reaches the big top

Running towards the players' box in a corner of Arthur Ashe Stadium here at the US Open, the 22-year-old Belgian gave an impromptu display of athleticism, mounting a handrail and balancing her way along it, with the helping hands of startled spectators.

The organisers had cause to look the other way. Having made out a cheque for $2.2m (£1.2m) for Clijsters, doubling her $1.1m prize money as a bonus for winning the US Open Series of lead-up tournaments, the last thing they needed was an insurance claim.

"I don't know where I was going, what I was doing," said Clijsters, who defeated Mary Pierce, of France, 6-3, 6-1. "I didn't want to be standing out there by myself. I just wanted to hug my mum and my sister. Luckily, I made it back safe."

While Clijsters was on her tightrope, Pierce, who has also recovered from severe injury problems, sat in her chair in a deflated posture and looked on. "I was thinking at 30 you never know whether you'll get a chance to be here again in a Grand Slam final," she said. "And I was looking at Kim and thinking what it's like to be 22 and happy after winning a big title, like I did at the Australian Open [in 1995]."

During the presentation, Clijsters took the microphone, congratulated Pierce for reaching the final, and thanked everybody, from her coach, Marc Dehous, to "the two most important men in my life at the moment, my father and Brian, who are watching on television in Belgium."

Her father, Leo Clijsters, Belgium's footballer of the year in 1988, was looking after the family's five dogs. Brian is Clijsters' boyfriend, Brian Lynch, a 6ft 7in basketball player from New Jersey who plays for Bree, Clijsters' home town.

The scene on Saturday night contrasted sharply with a photograph of Clijsters in the WTA media guide, nursing her left arm, which was in plaster, and looking wistful while watching the Australian Lleyton Hewitt, her fiancé at the time, compete at the 2004 French Open.

They were to have married early this year, but Clijsters, having ordered her wedding dress, broke the engagement. Hewitt subsequently married Bec Cartwright, an actress in the Australian soap, Home and Away, who is expecting a baby. She was here supporting her husband, who lost to Roger Federer in the men's semi-finals.

"If I look back now," Clisters said, "I think everything happened for a reason, Maybe that's why I'm sitting here now with this trophy next to me. I definitely think it all worked out very good for me."

Having lost Grand Slam finals to the American Jennifer Capriati, at the 2001 French Open, and to her compatriot Justine Henin-Hardenne in 2003 at the French Open and US Open and the 2004 Australian Open, Clijsters was determined not to let this one slip.

Hard-won victories against Venus Williams, the Wimbledon champion, in the quarter-finals, and Maria Sharapova, the 2004 Wimbledon champion, in the semi-finals, were the core of her triumph.

In the final, Clijsters was stronger than Pierce, who hit every shot as if it were her last and left the court for treatment to back and thigh problems that caused her to take a 12-minute injury time-out against the Russian Elena Dementieva in the semi-finals.

The support for Pierce was a mixture of encouragement and sympathy, but there was also a degree of irritation. Jerome Bianchi, the current fitness trainer of the France Fed Cup squad, who is originally from the rugby world, said: "The strengths that Mary has shown are her attitude on court and her will to win. Tonight she had neither of them."

On the eve of the tournament, Clijsters announced that she would retire after two more years on the Tour, and there is no sign of her changing her mind. "Two years is still long," she said. By winning here, she had proved to herself that she was "up there with the best of them" and that all her hard work had paid off.

"There were days when the doctors said, "It's going to be very tough for you to reach the same level again You just have to be patient. You just try to think positive. Your family and your friends are very important in those kind of situations."

Before leaving the grounds at midnight on Saturday, Clijsters, the toast of world tennis, was delighted to join flag-waving Belgian supporters for celebratory drinks at the Heineken Bar. Her mother, Els, and her mother's friend, Dora, jumped into the fountain, having bet each other before the tournament that they would do so if Kim won.