Olympic gold medalists Venus and Serena Williams cover the latest issue of The New York Times Magazine where Serena dishes on her biggest career scandals. Get the deets inside........
Venus Williams and her sister Serena Williams graced the cover of the latest NY Time Magazine where the Gold medal champion sisters flaunt their envious athletic bods. Inside the mag, their mother talks about how she felt about her daughters' track record of success:
“I reflected on the fact that in the United States, you don’t have many players that are doing well. And then you have these two old, black girls, up in age now, and they’re still holding up America. That to me was remarkable.”
Up in age? Oh.
Also in the article, Serena opened up about why she continues to boycott the Indian Wells Masters Series Tennis Tournament where she and her sister were taunted with racial slurs in 2001. She said,
“But I don’t need to go back there. They don’t like me. I don’t need to be there. If you can boo a teenager, and you can be white and 60 years old, you know what? I’m cool on you. I can understand maybe if they were 20, 15. But like at the French Open, the crowd boos you, but they’re young, they’re kids, they’re a younger crowd. It is what it is. You just know every time you go to Paris, you get booed, but you see so many kids in the crowd.
At Indian Wells, everybody goes there when they’re retired. It’s like Palm Beach. I thought, People like Martin Luther King Jr. boycotted things. And this is nothing on that level. Look at Muhammad Ali, he didn’t even play, he went to jail because he didn’t want to go to war. The least I can do is stand up for my people and not go there. That’s the very least I can do. It’s not even that hard of a decision. I get a vacation on those two weeks. It’s like the easiest decision of my career. They can penalize me to death, I’m never going back.”
She also talked about her outburst at a lineswoman at the 2009 US Open.
“I was definitely stressed, and I was angry. I don’t foot-fault. Like, I have in the past, but this woman should never make a call in the semifinals of a Grand Slam on a person who doesn’t foot-fault. She was totally wrong. I’m sorry. I’m not sorry. I looked at her like — I tried to warn her. And then she did it again. And I’m thinking, This is ridiculous.”
She added that she was embarassed about how she represented herself at the moment as a Jehovah's Witness.
"What bothered me most was that I was representing my religion. I just felt like anyone who knew I was a Witness was stumbled. And I really don’t want to stumble anybody. They had to have a talk with me. And I knew it was coming. I just felt really bad, though, because it’s like, that’s not who I am.”
Check out the issue on stands now and watch BTS footage here......
Photos via Damon Winter/The New York Times