At the height of her fame, she was one of the most photographed women in the world, a magnet for the paparazzi as well as for breathtakingly ignorant jibes about the perceived disparity between her looks and her talent. Yet the pictures that surfaced this week of a wheelchair-bound Anna Kournikova in the affluent Miami coastal resort of Bal Harbour say more about the former tennis star than a thousand glossy photoshoots ever could.
They offer a poignant reminder of the injury struggles that forced Kournikova, who reached the Wimbledon semi-finals in and achieved a career-high ranking of No 8 in the world, to call time on her career aged The first photos of the reclusive year-old to emerge in more than two years, which show her wearing an orthopaedic boot while accompanied by her two young daughters, also tell the story of a woman whose life has undergone a sea of change in the years since she departed the sporting stage.
They offer a portrait of the once teenage prodigy as a mother and also, by virtue of their very rarity, a nod to the more private, family centred life the reclusive Russian has enjoyed in the years since the flashbulbs faded. Kournikova's personal life, once the focus of endless media speculation - to the point where she famously told Sports Illustrated , 'Every country I visit, I have a different boyfriend and I kiss them all' - has long since ceased to be the subject of tabloid tittle-tattle.
Kournikova and Iglesias have three children, fraternal twins Lucy and Nicholas, aged seven, and five-year-old Mary. Lucy and Mary accompanied their mother in Bal Harbour, while the whole family were last pictured together in May , when Kournikova posted a picture of Iglesias's birthday celebrations on social media.
The first pictures of former tennis prodigy Anna Kournikova seen in more than two years show her sporting an orthopaedic boot while sitting in a wheelchair during an outing in Miami.
