In the hay days of Muhammad Ali, he faced a lot of antagonism, worse was organized racial antagonism. Each time he fought, he was redeeming the battered image of the black race, especially there in America not in faraway Africa. In the ring, it was an opportunity to beat the white in their game. As each bout saw the backs of white boxers on the canvas, the antagonism grew, took more wings, towered like a belfry and spread like an ocean. What his fists could do in the ring, his mouth did more in and out of the ring, and the racial battle dogged him unendingly. Serena Williams had her own running racial battle on the court and off the court.
Dominating women tennis for a career spanning almost three decades came with a lot of rivalry from fellow players gunning for the honour down to racial seeing an indomitable black tennis player doing the unimaginable on courts. It was from that unrelieved running racial battle came the most banal racial slur like "...she doesn't have the supple body of a woman" down to even caricaturing her to look like an ape. You could bet that all of this may have given her the needed invigoration to surpass each height she had got to. If she felt broken and cried, we never saw it. We see the racism African football players face on the pitch. We see their reactions; some have cried when racially abused on the field of play (Ballotteli); some have walked away while the match was going on in bitter anger; some have even kicked the ball into the spectators while being restrained from leaving the pitch in the middle of the match. But not Serena Williams. From every racial crucifixion she was subjected to by some brutal writers, she came back to the court to beat all the racists with her feats - this is the Serena Williams we have known for decades!
So here we have Serena Williams bowing out of the stage with shoulders high, leaving other active players groping in the shadows of her vast expanse of achievements. Some tennis pundits have predicted that it may take a relatively short time to catch up with her and outstrip her achievements. While outstripping her achievements is possible, it's likely, it's not going to be any time soon. Take for instance Margaret Court with the highest Grand Slams at 24. She retired in 1977, taking Serena Williams decades to be able to sniff 23 Grand Slams, one short of the all time Grand Slam wins. But 23 is by no means a mean feat!
Having inspired many black and white young female tennis players to go for the glory with sheer determination, she will be going off the stage leaving sterling legacies behind. Greatness she saw; greatness she got never ever allowing her shoulders to hang in a stoop for long in moments of some lurches. Rather, she came back those times to take the world by storm. That for me is a takeaway.
Congratulations Serena Williams. Enjoy your retirement. Raise the family with more dedication. Keep being the role model your father instilled in you and your sister. Let the post Serena Williams' era begin, and let's see how it all plays out.
Your post has been curated manually by@alend and thanks for posting