Legendary American tennis player Serena Williams, along with her husband Alexis Ohanian and their daughters Olympia and Adira, have been visiting Paris for the past few weeks and attending several Olympic competitions.
Serena’s stay in the French capital was not without incident. For example, at the opening ceremony of the Games, Williams almost fell off a boat into the Seine and, shortly after, was not allowed into the hotel’s luxurious rooftop restaurant. The tennis player’s husband, Reddit co-founder and American entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian also found himself in a rather funny situation when he was not recognized by the Olympic commentator and Williams called him an “umbrella carrier.”
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Serena and Alexis did not always visit the Paris stadiums together. They supported the US women’s national soccer team, but the couple was mainly interested in various sporting events. Williams attended swimming, gymnastics and the Novak Djokovic-Carlos Alcaraz tennis final. But Ohanyan enjoyed watching track and field athletes the most.
Alexis Ohanian and Serena Williams during the US women’s soccer team match at the Olympics
Photo: Arturo Holmes/Getty Images
Williams and Ohanyan may attend some event together, such as the basketball finals, where the US men’s and women’s teams qualified. In any case, they will have enough time to spend a comfortable holiday in Paris.
Alexis even managed to record an interview for the Best of Both Worlds podcast with Flau’jae, in which he spoke a lot about his wife in a charming tone. At the same time, in a statement Ohanyan was harsh towards former Russian tennis player Anna Kournikova. He was outraged that trading cards with Kournikova had been selling for more than similar Serena memorabilia for decades.
“I once found out that a card from Serena’s first season on the WTA circuit was being sold cheaper than a similar card of Anna Kournikova. This was about six years ago. I thought it was some kind of mistake, but Serena was really not as valued on the market as Kournikova. Basically, this situation was created by some idiots who probably had a poster of Kournikova on their university wall. They completely misjudged the greatest tennis player of all time. So I quietly started buying Serena cards. I have thousands of them, but I bought them for next to nothing. I started talking about it on various podcasts and interviews, so the price gradually went up. As a result, Serena’s card became the most expensive in the history of women’s sport,” Ohanyan said.
Ohanyan’s latest statement concerns the purchase of a card with Serena’s image from the 2003 season at the Goldin auction in 2023 for $266.4 thousand. This amount really became a record in the history of women’s sport, which the company’s director, Ken Goldin, boasted about.
Serena Williams card sold for a women’s sports record
Photo: From Ken Goldin’s personal archive.
The buyer of the card chose to remain anonymous. Ohanyan claims that it is not him, but someone else. Alexis is proud that someone “restored justice” and bought Williams’ card for a record amount of money, eclipsing Kournikova. He believes that he played a significant role in this process. Although Serena herself does not appreciate it very much. Alexis has about 7,000 of her cards in her closet. One day she saw them and asked to move them somewhere else.
“Serena was like, ‘Can you do something about this?’ The ratio of clothes to cards in my closet is still not great. By definition, I’m not even sure it’s a closet anymore,” Ohanian said on the same podcast.
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It seems that Ohanian’s obsession with souvenirs with his wife’s image is a bit excessive. Even Serena noticed this. At the same time, for some reason Alexis spoke disrespectfully about Anna Kournikova.
There’s no arguing that Serena was more successful on the court. The American won 23 Grand Slam tournaments and Kournikova didn’t take home a singles WTA title (although she did take two TSB titles together with Martina Hingis). But Anna was more revered among fans due to her striking looks.
Anna Kournikova
Photo: Gary Miller/FilmMagic/Getty Images
It is not surprising that Kournikova is still popular even now. It is quite possible that the average price of cards with her is even higher than with Serena. For example, the starting price of Anna’s card from the Netpro Tennis Elite 2003 series is $2.6 thousand, and a similar souvenir with Williams can be bought on eBay with a starting bid of $1.5 thousand.
Ohanyan disrespectfully calls Kournikova’s fans “idiots” and generally devalues the status of Russian women. If he wanted to once again express his admiration for Serena, then he could have done so in a more correct way without being harsh on Anna.
