In The Williams Method, when Serena saw her sister Venus receive her first major tournament anointing, she walked into a corner visibly upset, maybe even disappointed. Her father, Richard, saw her, walked up to her and confidently said, “The plan is for Venus to play first at Wimbledon, but the same plan wants you to be the best of all time.”

Maybe Serena didn’t believe him at the time. After all, before that, she had learned to live in her sister’s shadow. Although both started under their father from a very young age, it was Venus who became the full-time coach while Serena stayed and trained with her mother, Oracin Pryce, on an abandoned court. In addition, she became the first in the US national championship, the moment she secretly announced her participation from her father, she became the first in hits.

But his father’s words were prophetic. When Serena spread her wings, she took off. She left her sister behind, she left everyone else behind. She didn’t just become the top scorer of all time with 23 Grand Slam titles and four Olympic gold medals. She became a symbol, especially for black female athletes, as she managed to turn the tide in a sport that was previously white-dominated and associated with the elite.

He learned to fight from a young age, from school to the courts. There was a period when their father decided not to compete in the national championship due to the racist comments they received and continue to receive, culminating in the attacks of Margaret Court, the former Australian champion who is one Grand Slam champion (24 to 23). ) is an American and has occasionally made offensive allusions about her “unnatural” body.

But even when the recognition came, the fighting was not over. This time she was against herself. In January 2017, he won the Australian Open for the 7th time. It was also her last Grand Slam title. On the day she celebrated her success, she was already two months pregnant. The following months were difficult. Olympia sees first light by caesarean section, leaving Serena with a severe pulmonary embolism. Suffering and a severe cough tear the stitches of the operation, doctors discover internal bleeding due to anticoagulants, Serena undergoes a third operation, a week after the birth of her daughter. All this causes her depression, which she revealed in 2018, although she had already returned to the courts.

Serena Williams, the leading tennis player of all time, will be 41 in a few weeks. At the age of 21, she rose to the top of the world rankings for the first time, and in 2013, at the age of 32, she became the oldest tennis player to take first place in the rankings. But the countdown has already begun. a long time ago. She herself knew this very well, from the moment she saw how an unknown Frenchwoman Harmony Tan knocked her out of the first round of Wimbledon.

Therefore, she decided to write the epilogue herself and leave only the role of the mother, since she had already begun work with her husband Alexei Oganyan on their second child. In a touching letter published in the September issue of Vogue, Serena says goodbye to the court, to her audience, to tennis, which she loved too passionately. On the cover, she is not in her … work clothes, but in a beautiful dress, the tail of which is held by her daughter in order to emphasize her femininity, which many doubted.

“I say goodbye terribly, worse than anyone in the world. But please know that I thank you more than I can ever put into words. You have led me to so many victories and so many trophies. I will miss this version of myself, this girl who played tennis. And I will miss you, ”he ends the journey of his dreams with these words.