Maria Sharapova announced her pregnancy with a beach photo.© Instagram
Former tennis star Maria Sharapova on Wednesday took to Instagram to announce her pregnancy. She shared a picture of her on a beach and wrote “Precious beginnings!!! Eating birthday cake for two has always been my specialty.” Sharapova is expecting the child with fiance Alexander Gilkes, a British businessman.
A five-time Grand Slam winner, Sharapova announced her retirement from tennis in 2020.
Sharapova shot to fame as a giggly 17-year-old Wimbledon winner in 2004, the third-youngest player to conquer the All England Club’s hallowed grass courts.
She became world number one in 2005 and won the US Open the next year.
But in 2007 Sharapova began her long on-off battle with shoulder trouble.
She would win the 2008 Australian Open before a second shoulder injury kept her off tour for the second half of the season, missing the US Open and Beijing Olympics.
In 2012, the Siberian-born Sharapova captured the French Open to become the 10th woman to complete a career Grand Slam. She added Olympic silver to her resume that year.
Her 2014 French Open title was another high after a dispiriting injury low.
More fitness troubles followed before the bombshell announcement of her positive test for the banned heart drug meldonium.
Always a fighter — the seven-year-old Maria and father Yuri left for the US in 1994 with just a borrowed $700 to their names — Sharapova returned to the sport in 2017.
Promoted
“Tennis – I’m saying goodbye,” she had said while announcing her retirement in an article for Vogue magazine. “After 28 years and five Grand Slam titles, though, I’m ready to scale another mountain – to compete on a different type of terrain.”
With AFP inputs
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