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Serena Williams of the United States hits a go back towards Venus Williams of the United States all over the ladies’s singles ultimate on day 13 of the Australian Open tennis match in Melbourne on January 28, 2017.
Greg Wood | Afp | Getty Images
BERLIN — It used to be an excellent sufficient carrying feat when Serena Williams received a report 23rd Grand Slam singles identify on the 2017 Australian Open, beating her sister Venus within the ultimate. Soon after got here a revelation: she have been pregnant on the time.
“I don’t know how I did that, honestly,” Williams mentioned at an tournament Wednesday, deciding on the instant as an important of her tennis profession.
It’s been rather the profession — after profitable her first Grand Slam on the U.S. Open in 1999, Williams went directly to change into the one participant to have accomplished the “Golden Slam” — profitable the Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon and US Open and getting an Olympic gold medal — in each singles and doubles tennis.
“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,” Williams mentioned on the SuperReturn non-public fairness convention in Berlin.
“I didn’t tell anyone. 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.”
Early being pregnant signs can also be intense because the frame undergoes an enormous transformation, with a surge in hormones regularly resulting in fatigue, breathlessness and nausea.
“I remember saying, I have to do a lot of aces, I have to do a lot of winners,” Williams persevered, referring to some degree scored without delay from a serve. “I can only play, like, four balls and I’m done.”
“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.”
US tennis legend Serena WIlliams (R) poses for a selfie {photograph} together with her daughter Olympia and husband Alexis (C) forward of kick-off within the English Women’s FA Cup ultimate soccer fit between Chelsea and Manchester United at Wembley Stadium, in north west London, on May 18, 2025.
Justin Tallis | Afp | Getty Images
Williams, who has two daughters with investor and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, stepped again from skilled tennis in 2022 to concentrate on her circle of relatives.
Sports stars akin to bicycle owner Laura Kenny have spoken in recent times concerning the demanding situations of balancing an intense and bodily hard profession with a need to get pregnant, whilst tennis participant Naomi Osaka has criticized public observation that one will have to be sacrificed for the opposite.
‘You do not need to simply keep in a single lane’
Williams now runs mission capital fund Serena Ventures, which has 40 portfolio corporations.
She advised the packed target audience of personal fairness execs that the qualities that made her obsessive about profitable in sports activities translated to a single-minded center of attention as an investor.
“I do remember at one point, walking on the court at Wimbledon, and my partner at the time called me about a deal that we were trying to close,” she recalled.
“I was on Court One that day, and it’s a really long walk. And I remember talking to her on the phone, and in the conversation, she’s like … How’s your day going? I’m like: Well, I’m walking on the court right now. And she’s just like: Are you kidding me? You have to get off the phone. I’m like, okay, it’s fine. It’s a long walk. I’ve done it before. So that’s how intense, how intentional I am,” Williams mentioned.
She famous that she seems to be for founders who’re obsessed with being the most efficient at what they do and converting the lives of folks they wish to affect.
Her earliest funding used to be within the American soccer staff Miami Dolphins in 2009, when she used to be the sector’s top-ranked feminine participant.
“We got so many bad articles about why we shouldn’t be doing this. We need to just focus on tennis, and we need to not think about this,” she mentioned of the response from the media and carrying global on the time.
“Now as an athlete, we’re at the point where if you’re only doing basketball or if you’re only doing football, if you’re only doing tennis, it’s like, well, what else are you doing? So we gave people that platform to be like, it’s okay. You can also be an entrepreneur, and you can do sport. You don’t have to just stay in one lane, you know, and just do one thing.”
