The greatest athlete alive

The greatest athlete alive hands down, in my opinion, is Serena Williams of Compton. Overall, she has the most singles, doubles and mixed doubles combined of any active player. Noteworthy is that Serena has won 23 Grand Slam tournament single titles, ranking her second in the world, the number one player is Margaret Court with 24 titles, whom Serena has never played because she is retired. Listing her records would take an entire page, so I will only list those, as I feel they encompass how skilled she is.

Serena Williams has been playing tennis since she was three years old, she even attended a tennis academy as a preteen. Unfortunately, her father removed Serena and her sister Venus after hearing some white players’ parents making derogatory comments about Venus. Racism has always followed Serena throughout her entire career.

Through observation I’ve noticed that racism is always more blatant in predominantly white sports, such as figure skating and tennis. Serena Williams has faced racism in many forms. The media has historically called her “muscular” and “intimidating”. Even within the black community she has been unfairly degraded and insulted about her looks. For example, whenever a writer decides to talk about the one-sided feud between Maria Sharapova, a Russian tennis player, and Serena, they always pick images of Serena mid serve (an aggressive stance) and Sharapova standing demurely. Once again trying to portray Serena as aggressive and intimidating.

Serena has won 19 of the 21 games ever between her and Sharapova, yet the media sees it fit to call Sharapova Serena’s competition; Serena has not lost to Sharapova since 2005, when she was 23 years old. Serena has also been statistically tested for drugs far more than any other tennis player (even the ones who cheated), with no justifiable reason. One can assume the organizers simply cannot fathom how she’s such a great player and is wiping the floor with these other players. Did I forget to mention that Sharapova has been caught using banned drugs to increase her performance and she still couldn’t beat Serena? She even played and won games while pregnant, setting a new level for pregnant women (specifically athletes) worldwide. Black excellence at its finest.

Currently Serena is married to Alexis Ohanian who is the cofounder of the news website Reddit.com and has a beautiful 11-month-old daughter. Serena has detailed her own difficult birth and even admitted that she almost died. She realized that she was in a great deal of pain and notified her doctor who readily dismissed her. Could you imagine being such a profound athlete and your own doctor thinks you’re over exaggerating your pain? Believe it or not, white doctors have historically believed that black women can tolerate more pain than other races, a belief that still exists today. She quite frankly stated “I almost died after giving birth to my daughter”; as rich as she was she still faced discrimination from her own doctors.

Even recently the tennis chief banned her black catsuit because “he didn’t like it”. This catsuit was designed to help stop the formation of blood clots which she is especially at risk for after her pregnancy. He tried to claim the catsuit was inappropriate, which is complete nonsense, considering the usual uniform is a useless and sexist miniskirt.

Therefore, in my opinion, she will go down as the greatest athlete that ever lived. She has faced racism, discrimination and sexism throughout her entire career and she still refuses to be bitter (which she is entitled to). She is black, and she is proud, and deserves every good thing that comes her way.