Serena Williams had many outstanding moments during her storied tennis career.
But the American superstar singles out winning a Grand Slam while pregnant as probably her most astonishing achievement.
“I don’t know how I did that, honestly,” Williams said on Wednesday (6 June) at the SuperReturn private equity conference in Berlin, Germany.
“I don’t know what I was doing then, I was nine weeks pregnant … I do remember not being able to run for a long time.”
The four-time Olympic gold medallist, now 43, won a record 23 Grand Slam title at the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant with her first of two daughters, Olympia, at the age of 35. Even more remarkable was that she didn’t drop a set on her way to winning her seventh title in Melbourne.
She beat her sister Venus in that epic final.
“I didn’t tell anyone,” continued Williams, who retired from professional in 2022 after a 27-year career.
“I mean, Venus knew, and I still feel really bad about that, because a deep part of me feels like because we played each other in the final, I’m like, she must have known, and she must have felt some sort of deep heaviness to go even further and go all out. But she was only one of two people that knew.”
“I remember one time playing a long point against one player, and I couldn’t breathe. And I’m like, how does she not see that I’m not able to breathe right now, and so I just intentionally lost the next point just to kind of try and get my energy back. But then I was like: Why am I playing this far pregnant? This is nuts.”
Williams was speaking in Berlin to private equity professionals as the owner of Serena Ventures, a venture capital firm she runs.
