Anna Kournikova on the persistent injuries and ‘excruciating pain’ that forced her tennis retirement at 21
Anna Kournikova has faced some difficult health challenges through the years.
Most recently, the former tennis star was seen for the first time in public in two years, taking a stroll through Miami with her children — who she shares with longtime love Enrique Iglesias — in a wheelchair.
Though it remains unclear what happened to the Russian novel, she was also seen wearing a medical boot on one of her legs.
Back in 2003, it was back-to-back injuries that caused her to hang up her racket for good, retiring from tennis when she was only 21 years old.
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In an interview with The Guardian shortly before her retirement, she noted: “Basically, I’ve had an injury nearly every single year,” of her professional tennis career.
She recalled: “In ’97 I had a stress fracture and was out for three months. In ’98 I had a torn ligament in my thumb and was out for three months; in ’99 I had another stress fracture for three months. In 2001 I didn’t basically play the whole year.
Her then-agent Phil de Picciotto, per The Guardian, also explained to Observer Sports at the time that her career was in a “state of limbo” and she did not have a coach overseeing her, because she wasn’t “playing consistently at all as a result of her back and the need for physiotherapy and lots of rest.”
Addressing her back trouble, which was primarily throughout her lower back and lumbar-sacral region, Phil further shared: “It could be hereditary or training at a young age or too much tennis or bad luck,” adding: “They just don’t know exactly.”
Years after her early retirement, in 2011, Anna reflected on it in a conversation with People, confessing: “I never planned or thought that was going to be it.”
My back really forced me to stop. It got so bad; I couldn’t tie my shoes, literally. I would be in excruciating pain. I had been doing six to eight hours [of training] every day since I was 5 years old,” she recalled
She further shared: “It was very interesting to me to stop playing and to figure out, ‘Who am I without tennis?’ It was very difficult and scary as hell.”
“I did everything from therapy to 10-hour walks on the beach to discover, and think, and try new things,” she added, and noted that Enrique, who she met and started dating around the time that she retired, was a crucial part of her “support system” that had “helped me figure out who I am.”
