In the 90s and 2000s, she was hitting forceful groundstrokes, playing drop shots, playing right-handed with a two-handed backhand. Now she is wheelchair-bound.
Anna Kournikova has been spotted in public after two years, and she has been seen in a wheelchair.
Naturally, the question arises – what happened to her?

What happened to Kournikova?

The Ex-tennis star left fans worried recently as she made a public appearance with her boyfriend Enrique Iglesias and daughters Lucy and Mary. Though it remains unclear what happened to the Ex-tennis player, she was also seen wearing a medical boot on one of her legs, back in 2003, it was back-to-back injuries that caused her to hang up her racket for good, retiring from tennis when she was only 21 years old. In an interview with The Guardian shortly before her retirement, she noted: “Basically, I’ve had an injury nearly every single year,” of her professional tennis career.

The health hiccups:

In the same interview, Kournikova recalled: “In ’97 I had a stress fracture and was out for three months. In ’98 I had a torn ligament in my thumb and was out for three months; in ’99 I had another stress fracture for three months. In 2001 I didn’t basically play the whole year.”
Anna’s then-agent Phil de Picciotto, as per The Guardian, also explained to Observer Sports at the time that her career was in a “state of limbo” and she did not have a coach overseeing her, because she wasn’t “playing consistently at all as a result of her back and the need for physiotherapy and lots of rest.”
Addressing her back trouble, which was primarily throughout her lower back and lumbar-sacral region, Phil further shared: “It could be hereditary or training at a young age or too much tennis or bad luck,” adding: “They just don’t know exactly.”

Years after her early retirement, in 2011, Anna reflected on it in a conversation with People, confessing: “I never planned or thought that was going to be it.” She recalled, “My back really forced me to stop. It got so bad; I couldn’t tie my shoes, literally. I would be in excruciating pain. I had been doing six to eight hours [of training] every day since I was 5 years old.”
She further shared: “It was very interesting to me to stop playing and to figure out, ‘Who am I without tennis?’ It was very difficult and scary as hell. I did everything from therapy to 10-hour walks on the beach to discover, and think, and try new things.”
However, Anna added that Enrique Iglesias (Spanish singer-songwriter, Anna’s partner since 2001), who she met and started dating around the time that she retired, was a crucial part of her “support system” that had “helped me figure out who I am.”

Who is Anna Kournikova?

Born in Moscow, Russia, Anna Sergeyevna Kournikova Iglesias, is a Russian model and television personality, and former professional tennis player.

Despite never winning a singles title, she reached No. 8 in the world in 2000. She achieved greater success playing doubles, where she was at times the world’s No. 1 player. With Martina Hingis as her partner, she won Grand Slam titles in Australia in 1999 and 2002, and the WTA Championships in 1999 and 2000. They referred to themselves as the “Spice Girls of Tennis”.
Her appearance and celebrity status made her one of the best-known tennis stars worldwide. At the peak of her fame, fans looking for images of Kournikova made her name one of the most common search strings on Google Search.
Although Kournikova started making her mark from early teenage as she she won the European Championships and the Italian Open Junior tournament at the age of 14, and in 1995, she became the youngest player to win the 18-and-under division of the Junior Orange Bowl tennis tournament, she retired from professional tennis in 2003 due to serious back and spinal problems, including a herniated disk.

She lives in Miami Beach, Florida, and played in occasional exhibitions and doubles for the St. Louis Aces of World TeamTennis before the team folded in 2011. She was a new trainer for season 12 of the television show The Biggest Loser, replacing Jillian Michaels, but did not return for season 13. In addition to her tennis and television work, Kournikova serves as a Global Ambassador for Population Services International’s “Five & Alive” program, which addresses health crises facing children under the age of five and their families.