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Tennis nice Serena Williams took to X on Tuesday to insist that she just isn’t planning a return to the courtroom, hours after information broke that she has re-entered the game’s drug-testing pool.
“Omg yall I’m NOT coming again,” the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion wrote. “This wildfire is crazy-”
Williams performed her final match on Sept. 2, 2002, a loss to Australian Ajla Tomljanovic within the third spherical of the U.S. Open. The following day, Williams registered as retired with the Worldwide Tennis Integrity Company, which oversees anti-doping and anti-corruption efforts within the sport, which means she was now not topic to common drug testing.
An ITIA spokesperson confirmed to The Occasions on Tuesday that Williams is again within the company’s drug-testing pool. Retired gamers “might not return to sanctioned occasions except they’ve made themselves accessible for out-of-competition testing for at the very least six months previous to the occasion in query,” in accordance with the ITIA web site.
That’s the reason discuss of a possible Williams comeback was spreading like “wildfire” earlier than the 44-year-old tried to extinguish the flames on X. The mom of two didn’t clarify why she is again within the testing pool. A consultant for Williams didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark from The Occasions.
Williams famously prevented the phrase “retirement” when she introduced her plan to step away from tennis in an August 2022 column in Vogue.
“Perhaps one of the best phrase to explain what I’m as much as is evolution,” she mentioned. “I’m right here to let you know that I’m evolving away from tennis, towards different issues which might be essential to me.”
Older sister Venus Williams, a seven-time Grand Slam champion, returned to the courtroom earlier this 12 months after a prolonged hiatus. Throughout her run to the U.S. Open girls’s doubles quarterfinals with associate Leylah Fernandez, Venus Williams talked about that her sister was “teaching from afar.”
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