What is it with Maria Sharapova? Is she making a Kurnikova, I mean concentrate on the money outside the court?

Question

If so, I think she is compromising the integrety of the sport.

If tennis is only a stepstone for further money outside the sport, I thnik it is sad.

NB. I`m the biggest fan of her, and have followed her from 2002!

Answer 1

well she's been doing that for a while really. the ads, the clothes, the modeling... I think this is why all the other Russian players don't like her (and because she's too 'American'). I even remember Kudryavtsiva (sp?) saying she was motivated to beat her because she didn't like her outfit (and seriously they are getting more and more ridiculous). It's her life and therefore her choice, but I can't respect a player like that.

EDIT

like I said it's up to her to set her priorities and no one has the right to criticize whatever choice she makes. But I hold professional integrity very highly. She gets more money, so? she put her tennis career in the background to chase stardom and she's becoming a 'model' who only aspires to make as much money as she can as fast as possible. If she wanted financial security then she has all the doors open to pick whatever she wants but she choose the easiest most glamorous way possible and I can't help but think it's what she wanted all along. She reminds me too much of David Beckham and while I don't dislike either of them, I don't respect them as athletes who only used sport as a steppingstone.

EDIT

yeah I meant they used sport as a way to get the fame and glamour that the US offers which is what they were after in the first place. Sport was just the tool that got them this lifstyle.

EDIT

I think we'll have to agree to disagree. Some athletes think about how to make as much money as possible, while others have more repect toward the sports they practice and put them first.

Sharapova always talked about wanting to retire early so it wasn't something she thought of in response her injuried, she planned this ahead. Like I said it's her own life and her own choices, but I love tennis (and football) more than I love the players, so I hate it when someone uses sports to get to what they believe are a better things.

Answer 2

So what's the professional lifespan of a sports-person? And yeah, its going to depend on the sport, and the person. But all athletes know that at a comparatively early age they'll be retiring from their chosen profession.

So i think its unfair to accuse someone like Beckham of using his sport as a stepping-stone to further money outside. His career of choice ends thirty odd years before most people's careers do. He has the rest of his life after football, and so he either has to make enough money while he plays to be comfortable for ever after (and he will), or he has to find something else to do once no longer physically up to the sport.

And certainly there's a stereotype that these are ".45 magnum body, .22 brain" individuals that while by no means across-the-board true, has to hold some weight. So among the best options for continued employment, especially if you're Maria Sharapova, and one of your primary attributes is a goddess like level of physical beauty, are modelling and acting. neither is as physically strenuous as professional sport, so can be carried on after the tennis becomes too much.

Its not "stepping-stoning" its planning ahead.

And in the case of Sharapova, she's been plagued by injuries recently. Somewhere at the back of her mind, or more likely, given how she's seemed unfocused and vulnerable even when ostensibly fit, at the front of her mind, maybe, just maybe, there's the question "How much longer can i do this?" Its ever so possible that she now believes her ability (in terms of physical fitness, not talent) to keep playing the game is limited, that now is the time to start shifting priorities to the long-term.

And yeah, if that's happening, it is sad. But not because of a compromise of integrity, or any idea that this was always the plan, "ooh, i'll play some tennis, then I'll get to make money as a model." That idea is gratuitously offensive.

It's sad because it may mean the WTA will lose a major star, and tennis can go back to being the preserve of dumpy lesbians and she-hes (See! The history_light knows gratuitously offensive.).