Venus, the bold and beautiful

May we take a moment to talk about Venus Williams? As a child, I too played tennis, briefly, badly. I had a wooden racquet with “8” – my age – printed on the strings, frilly broekies and pompom socks.

But these days tennis has Lycra, it has the glorious Williams sisters, and now Venus back in the Wimbledon final after nine years.

Naturally, I watched from the edge of my seat. How could I not?

At 37, five-time champion Venus is a tennis senior citizen: to think she turned pro in 1994, the same year her finals opponent, Garbiñe Muguruza, turned one!

So, Venus was doing it for “older” women.

She was doing it for sick folk too, because in 2011 her career was almost ended by the autoimmune disease Sjögren’s syndrome.

She was doing it for all the vegans who’re regularly informed, wrongly, that they “need” to eat animals to be strong.

At 1.85m tall, she was doing it for tall women too.

She was doing it for kids from the wrong side of town, for she is “straight outta Compton”, the one-time murder capital of the US, and she knows that violence first-hand, for her big sister and personal assistant, Yetunde Price, was killed in a drive-by shooting in Compton in 2003.

She was doing it for the bereaved.

She was doing it under a cloud, after being involved in a car accident in June which led to the death of an old man. She entered Wimbledon during this storm, with a pending wrongful death lawsuit looming, though she has since been found blameless.

Most obviously of all, Venus was doing it for black women – one of the most marginalised groups in the world.

She keeps doing it too, despite the haters.

All this Venus manages with dignity, splendid even in defeat, with her trademark smile and a cat-flick of stayfast eyeliner.

(She loves fashion and design, but off the court holds degrees in business and fashion, runs an interior design firm and creates her own range of athletic wear…)

Yes, this time she lost, but don’t forget it was Venus who, in 2007, finally forced both Wimbledon and the French Open to pay women equal prize money. I hope Garbiñe Muguruza thanked her.

Full disclosure: I love Venus Williams. Dammit, everybody should!