Maria Yuryevna Sharapova (; born 19 April 1987) is a Russian former professional tennis player. She is one of ten women, and the only Russian, to hold the career Grand Slam. She won a silver medal in women’s singles at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. She has been named highest-paid female athlete in the world for 11 consecutive years and earned US$285 million since she turned pro in 2001. In March 2016, she revealed she had failed a drug test at the 2016 Australian Open.
About Maria Sharapova in brief
Maria Yuryevna Sharapova (; born 19 April 1987) is a Russian former professional tennis player. She is one of ten women, and the only Russian, to hold the career Grand Slam. She won a silver medal in women’s singles at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London. She has been named highest-paid female athlete in the world for 11 consecutive years and earned US$285 million since she turned pro in 2001. In June 2011, she was named one of the \”30 Legends of Women’s Tennis: Past, Present and Future\” by Time and in March 2012 was namedOne of the 100 Greatest of All Time by Tennis Channel. In March 2016, she revealed she had failed a drug test at the 2016 Australian Open. She had tested positive for meldonium, a substance that had been banned by the World Anti-Doping Agency. On 8 June 2016,she was suspended from playing tennis for two years by the International Tennis Federation. On 4 October 2016, the suspension was reduced to 15 months, starting from the date of the failed test, as the Court of Arbitration for Sports found that she had committed no significant fault. She returned to the WTA Tour on 26 April 2017 at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix. Since February 2007, she has been a United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador, concerned specifically with the Chernobyl Recovery and Development Programme. Her father, Yuri, befriended Aleksandr Kafelnikov, whose son Yevgeny would go on to win two Grand Slam singles titles and become Russia’s first world No.
1 ranked tennis player, in the 1990s. She hit her first tennis ball when she was 4 years old. Her parents, Yuri Sharapov and Yelena, are from Gomel, Byelorussian SSR, and moved to Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia, in 1989. In 1994, they moved to the United States, which they finally did in 1994. She took various low-paying jobs to fund her education until she was old enough to be admitted to the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida. She also won three doubles titles in her debut in 2004, including the year-ending WTA Finals in her first appearance at the tournament. In 2010, she became the first Russian female tennis player to top the singles rankings, at the age of 18, and last held the ranking for a fifth time for four weeks from 11 June 2012, to 8 July 2012. In 2012, she won five Grand Slam titles — two at the French Open and one each at the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open, winning 36 titles in total. She appeared in many advertisements, including those for Nike, Prince, and Canon, and has been the face of several fashion houses, most notably Cole Haan. In 2013, she appeared in a feature in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue. In 2014, she launched a new programme to mentor women entrepreneurs.
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