Tennis star, businesswoman, role model: Venus Williams turns 40

With her left arm gracefully stretched upwards, a slight wave from her wrist and turned around her own axis on tiptoes - hardly any tennis player has perfected her celebration pirouette after winning matches as much as Venus Williams. Confident, elegant and self-confident - just like the game of the American, who is celebrating her 40th birthday this Wednesday.

Williams' story is one of talent, hard work, but also calculation. It begins shortly before her birth in 1980, when her father Richard sees a tennis prize money check on television. “$40 to win a tournament? “I knew then that I was in the wrong business,” he once said and made the decision that his daughter should become a tennis professional. Titles en masse When Venus Williams played her first professional match as a 1994-year-old in 14, no one imagined that the girl with white pearls in her braids would be at the top of the tennis world eight years later. Nobody except father Richard: “She wants to win Wimbledon. She will be a champion,” he said when his daughter was XNUMX years old. His father was right: five Wimbledon titles followed.

Won title en masse: Venus Williams. © APA/afp / ROSLAN RAHMAN

Her introverted nature on the court, coupled with a powerful, no-frills baseline game, would lead Venus to a total of 49 individual titles to date - including seven Grand Slam tournament victories and Olympic gold in Sydney in 2000. “I’m always calm, that’s my style,” Venus once said. She rarely shows emotions on the court - in contrast to her sister Serena, who is one year younger. Sister Act as an eternal duel Anyone who thinks of Venus automatically thinks of Serena and of countless duels between the two - the so-called Sister Act, in which Serena is ahead with 18:12 victories. The story of one of the biggest rivalries in women's tennis is also one of shared success. Together, the Williams sisters won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles and three Olympic gold medals. In 2010 they were together at the top of the doubles world rankings.

And yet Venus probably celebrated one of her greatest victories off the pitch. In 2006, before the Wimbledon tournament, she published an essay in The Times of London in which she called for equal prize money for men and women. At the beginning of 2007, the organizers bowed to public pressure and Williams, who would celebrate her fourth success at Church Road that same year, quietly but with satisfaction accepted the title as a fighter for justice. Fight against illness Williams is still fighting another battle - against Sjögren's syndrome. An autoimmune disease that doctors diagnosed in the American in 2011 and which can lead to chronic fatigue. Sometimes Williams couldn't even hold the bat because of her weakness, she once said. It's all the more impressive that she reached the Wimbledon final again in 2017 - 20 years after her first Grand Slam final at the US Open.

The Californian is now more than just a tennis player. She is a designer with her own clothing line, runs an interior design office and is part of an American game show. So she has everything planned for life after her tennis career, even if that still has to wait. “Without a doubt I will be hitting the felt ball for a while,” the oldest top 100 player recently said on Instagram. So the fans can hope for more pirouettes.

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Tennis star, businesswoman, role model: Venus Williams turns 40

In her 26-year career, Venus Williams has achieved everything that tennis players dream of: Olympic gold, Grand Slam title and world number one. But the American celebrated one of her greatest successes off the pitch.

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