The other empire of Serena Williams

The term retirement is not in the dictionary of Serena Williams.

"It's not a modern word," reflected the 40-year-old American tennis player, winner of 23 Grand Slams, who announced on Tuesday that she will hang up her racket in a few weeks.

After winning everything in her sport, the most successful tennis player of the Open era assumes that the time has come for her sports retirement, but that does not mean at all that she plans to lie on the sofa to live on the rents.

As she herself highlighted in her statement, published in

magazine , her goal now is to expand her family to give her four-year-old daughter Olympia a brother or sister, and to focus on her business side, in which she has shown be as voracious as on the slopes.

Since lifting the US Open at the age of 17 in 1999, her first major, the youngest of five siblings raised in the Compton neighborhood of Los Angeles, has risen as an icon of her sport and as one of the most influential people in the United States. .

Her unparalleled successes in tennis have made Williams the highest-earning female athlete in history.

During most of her career, she was the best paid in the world, until these last years in which her participation in her tournaments has become testimonial.

According to

Serena Williams has a fortune of 260 million dollars (almost 255 million euros), which makes her the richest female athlete of all time.

Of this amount, 94.5 million belong to her earnings on the WTA circuit, she being the tennis player who has won the most money in history ahead of her sister Venus de Ella, who registers almost half of her ( 42.3 million).

More information

Serena Williams' 23 titles, the greatest achievement in tennis

Sportingly, Serena Williams is one of the greatest figures of all time, the second tennis player with the most Grand Slams in history, only behind Margaret Court, who won 24 majors before the Open era.

Taking advantage of the showcase that tennis has given her, Williams has built a business empire that she will dedicate herself to once she retires from the WTA circuit, after the US Open that begins on August 29.

Many athletes, especially the big stars, have businesses outside their discipline that often bring them greater benefits than success in competitions.

Sponsorships continue to be a very important part of the income of athletes, but they are increasingly looking for ways to diversify.

Cristiano Ronaldo owns a hotel chain and a hair transplant company;

Tiger Woods founded an audiovisual production company for sports content;

Lewis Hamilton promotes a project to manufacture electric racing cars... Like these great champions, Williams has plunged headlong into the business world and currently has three main avenues of development: fashion, audiovisual production and investment in entrepreneurship.

Williams' passion for tennis is matched only by her interest in the world of sewing.

After several collaborations with Nike, the tennis player launched her own line of women's clothing in 2018 with the name

.

sale page for

her, the prices of her designs range from 30 euros to 250. The following year, she expanded her offer and launched a line of jewelry, also under the same name. Name.

"Some criticized my decision, but I knew I had two passions, tennis and fashion, and I had to find a way to make them coexist," Williams explained then.

Serena Williams with her daughter Olympia in her arms after showing her S by Selena line at New York Fashion WeekOhanian Jr. after showing her clothing line during last year.Seth Wenig (AP)

Become a celebrity, her life has been brought to the big screen.

In 2018 she premiered the biographical documentary of hers titled

, which was awarded at the PGA Awards.

This last year she made the leap to Hollywood and produced, together with her sister Venus, the film

, starring Will Smith, who played the father of the two tennis players.

“The way Will plays my father just takes the movie to another level,” Serena said at the film's premiere.

The same opinion was held by the Academy of the Oscars, which awarded Smith the award for best leading actor in the last edition, which ended with controversy due to the interpreter's aggression against the presenter of the gala.

But, without a doubt, the most ambitious project that the winner of 23 Grand Slams has in her hands right now is her investment fund for entrepreneurs called

, founded in 2014. Her husband, the creator of the Reddit portal, Alexis Ohanian, convinced her that if she created her own investment fund, she could support those projects in which she was more involved and promote the community of women and African Americans in the United States.

“I want to be in the infrastructure.

I want to be the brand, instead of just being the face,” she noted in an interview with

.

In March of this year, she raised $110 million in seed funding for Serena Ventures, which currently funds more than 60 companies, most of them run by women or Black people.

Serena Williams will leave the racket in the coming weeks and put on the businesswoman's suit, surely designed by herself.

But the greatest tennis player of the 21st century will not just disappear, but as she herself says, she is ready to evolve.

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