Serena Williams is literally one of the best athletes in the entire world—truly wondering where the heck she stores all 23 of her tennis Grand Slam trophies and four Olympics gold medals right about now—but this year, she won’t be playing tennis at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but Serena actually has a pretty good reason for not going.
Serena addressed whether or not she’d be attending the Olympic Games this year at a Wimbledon press conference last month, telling reporters, “I’m actually not on the Olympic list…If so, then I should not be on it.”
That’s pretty much all Serena said at Wimbledon about her Olympic attendance, but in May, she revealed she’d be incapable of going to the Olympics if her daughter, Olympia Ohanian, couldn’t come along. “I haven’t spent 24 hours without her,” Serena told reporters at the Italian Open according to NBC, “so that kind of answers the question itself.” Earlier in the tennis season, Serena also told reporters that she would “not be able to go function without my 3-year-old around…I think I would be in a depression. We’ve been together every day of her life.”
Olympic organizers issued a statement back in March that banned spectators and athlete’s family members from attending due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Serena didn’t confirm if this is the reason why she’s sitting out the Olympic Games this year, but she instead said “there’s a lot of reasons that I made my Olympic decision. I don’t really want to…I don’t feel like going into them today. Maybe another day. Sorry.”
Serena might also be skipping the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games due to a recent injury— last month, she aggravated her hamstring injury at Wimbledon during her sixth match against Aliaksandra Sasnovich.
Sucks that we won’t be seeing Serena at the Olympics this year, but I’m glad that she’s taking time off for herself—looking forward to (hopefully) seeing her at the 2024 Paris Olympic Games!
