Maria Sharapova

Concerned about the regional effects of the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear accident, they left their homeland shortly before Maria was born.

Maria Yuryevna Sharapova (Russian: Мария Юрьевна Шарапова, ; born 19 April 1987) is a Russian former world No. 1 tennis player.

Maria Sharapova was born on 19 April 1987, in Nyagan, Russian SFSR, Soviet Union.

Her parents, Yuri Sharapov and Yelena, are from Gomel, Byelorussian SSR.

In 1990, when Sharapova was three, the family moved to Sochi, Krasnodar Krai, Russia.

She hit her first tennis ball when she was 4 years old.

Her father, Yuri, befriended Aleksandr Kafelnikov, whose son Yevgeny would go on to win two Grand Slam singles titles and become Russia's first world No. 1 ranked tennis player.

Aleksandr gave Sharapova her first tennis racquet in 1991 when she was four, whereupon she began practicing regularly with her father at a local park.

Maria took her first tennis lessons with veteran Russian coach Yuri Yutkin, who was instantly impressed when he saw her play, noting her "exceptional hand-eye coordination".

In 1993, at the age of six, Sharapova attended a tennis clinic in Moscow run by Martina Navratilova, who recommended professional training with Nick Bollettieri at the IMG Academy in Bradenton, Florida.

Bollettieri had previously trained players such as Andre Agassi, Monica Seles, and Anna Kournikova.

Although she played under the banner of Russia with the WTA, she has lived in and been a United States permanent resident since 1994.

With money tight, Yuri Sharapov borrowed the sum that would enable him and his daughter, neither of whom could speak English, to travel to the United States, which they finally did in 1994.

Visa restrictions prevented Sharapova's mother from joining them for two years.

Arriving in Florida with savings of US$700, Sharapova's father took various low-paying jobs to fund her lessons until she was old enough to be admitted to the academy.

Initially, she trained with Rick Macci.

In 1995, however, she was signed by IMG, who agreed to pay the annual tuition fee of $35,000 for Sharapova to stay at the academy, allowing her to finally enroll at the age of 9.

Sharapova first hit tennis fame in November 2000, when she won the Eddie Herr International Junior Tennis Championships in the girls' 16 division at the age of just 13.

She was then given a special distinction, the Rising Star Award, which is awarded only to players of exceptional promise.

She competed on the WTA Tour from 2001 to 2020 and was ranked world No. 1 in singles by the Women's Tennis Association (WTA) for 21 weeks.

She is one of ten women to achieve the career Grand Slam.

According to Forbes, she was the highest-paid female athlete in the world for 11 consecutive years and earned US$285 million (including prize money) since she turned professional in 2001.

Sharapova made her professional debut in 2001 on her 14th birthday on 19 April, and played her first WTA tournament at the Pacific Life Open in 2002, winning a match before losing to Monica Seles.

Due to restrictions on how many professional events she could play, Sharapova went to hone her game in junior tournaments, where she reached the finals of the girls' singles events at the Australian Open and Wimbledon in 2002.

She was the youngest girl ever to reach the final of the Australian Open junior championship at 14 years and 9 months.

She won 36 titles in total, including the year-end championships on her debut in 2004.

She also won three doubles titles.

Sharapova became the world No. 1 for the first time on 22 August 2005 at the age of 18, becoming the first Russian woman to top the singles rankings, and last held the position on 8 July 2012.

She won five major titles — two at the French Open and one each at the Australian Open, Wimbledon, and the US Open.

Since February 2007, she has been a United Nations Development Programme Goodwill Ambassador, concerned specifically with the Chernobyl Recovery and Development Programme.

In June 2011, she was named one of the "30 Legends of Women's Tennis: Past, Present and Future" by Time and in March 2012 was named one of the "100 Greatest of All Time" by Tennis Channel.

She is also an Olympic medalist, having won silver in women's singles at the 2012 London Olympics.

She has been considered as one of the best tennis competitors of her generation.

Sharapova failed a drug test at the 2016 Australian Open, testing positive for meldonium, a substance that had been banned (effective 1 January 2016) by the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA).

On 8 June 2016, she was suspended from playing tennis for two years by the International Tennis Federation (ITF).

On 4 October 2016, the suspension was reduced to 15 months, starting from the date of the failed test, as the Court of Arbitration for Sport found that she had committed "no significant fault" and that she had taken the substance "based on a doctor's recommendation… with good faith belief that it was appropriate and compliant with the relevant rules".

She returned to the WTA Tour on 26 April 2017 at the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix.

Sharapova has been featured in a number of modeling assignments, including a feature in the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.

She has appeared in many advertisements, including those for Nike, Prince, and Canon, and has been the face of several fashion houses, most notably Cole Haan.

In 2018, she launched a new program to mentor women entrepreneurs.