At the height of her fame, she was one of the most photographed women in the world, a magnet for the paparazzi as well as for breathtakingly ignorant jibes about the perceived disparity between her looks and her talent. Yet the pictures that surfaced this week of a wheelchair-bound Anna Kournikova in the affluent Miami coastal resort of Bal Harbour say more about the former tennis star than a thousand glossy photoshoots ever could.
They offer a poignant reminder of the injury struggles that forced Kournikova, who reached the Wimbledon semi-finals in and achieved a career-high ranking of No 8 in the world, to call time on her career aged The first photos of the reclusive year-old to emerge in more than two years, which show her wearing an orthopaedic boot while accompanied by her two young daughters, also tell the story of a woman whose life has undergone a sea of change in the years since she departed the sporting stage.
They offer a portrait of the once teenage prodigy as a mother and also, by virtue of their very rarity, a nod to the more private, family centred life the reclusive Russian has enjoyed in the years since the flashbulbs faded.
Kournikova's personal life, once the focus of endless media speculation - to the point where she famously told Sports Illustrated , 'Every country I visit, I have a different boyfriend and I kiss them all' - has long since ceased to be the subject of tabloid tittle-tattle.
Kournikova and Iglesias have three children, fraternal twins Lucy and Nicholas, aged seven, and five-year-old Mary. Lucy and Mary accompanied their mother in Bal Harbour, while the whole family were last pictured together in May , when Kournikova posted a picture of Iglesias's birthday celebrations on social media.
