Maria Sharapova

Yuri Sharapov landed in Florida with seven hundred dollars in his pocket and a seven-year-old girl who barely spoke English. It was 1994, and Nick Bollettieri's academy in Bradenton was taking on young prospects by the dozen, but no one there imagined that this lanky girl from Siberia would end up earning more than three hundred million dollars in prize money and commercial contracts.

Her game never aimed for subtlety or the crowd's easy applause. She hit flat, screamed over a hundred decibels on every shot and looked at her rivals from the baseline as if they were expendable extras in her own movie.

At seventeen, she dismantled Serena Williams on the grass of London.

That victory in 2004 turned a cool-headed teenager into the most sought-after face in international women's sports. Contracts with brands such as Nike, Canon and Tag Heuer poured in over the following months. But unlike other figures devoured by the advertising machine, she insisted on sitting in on every corporate meeting to review distribution clauses before signing.

The machinery behind the grunt

On the court, she built a relentless style that had no use for pleasantries or half measures. She won the US Open in 2006 and two years later added the Australian Open to her personal trophy case, always under the fierce guidance of her father and a military-style discipline learned in the locker rooms of Florida. When a torn tendon in her right shoulder threatened to end her career in 2008, she rebuilt her serve from scratch instead of accepting the retirement that several surgeons privately suggested.

Paris was her cursed surface, a slow clay court that punished flat hitters and demanded precise, sliding footwork. Sharapova used to say she moved on clay like a cow on ice. It took her years to master that surface, but in 2012 she lifted the trophy at Roland Garros and completed the set of all four Grand Slam titles.

That same year she founded her own confectionery company with an initial investment of half a million dollars of her own money. The sports press mocked a champion who was selling candy shaped like tennis balls and colorful lips. But the company brought in five million dollars in its first fiscal year.

Nobody laughed at the shareholder meetings anymore.

The blow in the lab and the exit from the draw

A January 2016 doping test in Melbourne returned a positive result for meldonium, which shattered her reputation within hours. The cardiovascular substance had been added to the list of banned products just a few weeks before the tournament, and her medical team failed to review the technical circular that the World Anti-Doping Agency sent by mail at the end of 2015.

Sharapova didn't wait for leaks or evasive statements. She called an urgent press conference at a Los Angeles hotel, stepped up to the microphones dressed in strict black, and took responsibility for the oversight in front of cameras from around the world. Her initial two-year ban was reduced to fifteen months after her appeal to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

During that long forced break, she enrolled in an executive leadership program at Harvard Business School. She also used the time to write her memoir, Unstoppable: My Life So Far, published in 2017 by Sarah Crichton Books. In its pages she portrayed the harshness of her childhood without self-pity or sentimental concessions.

She returned to the courts in the spring of 2017, but her body no longer responded with the same mechanical reliability. Chronic shoulder pain and recurring forearm injuries spaced out her appearances in the main draw until, in February 2020, she announced her retirement in an essay published in Vanity Fair and Vogue.

From the locker room to the movie set

Far from the circuit, her striking presence found a natural place on screen and in international boardrooms. She appeared in the heist comedy Ocean’s 8 in 2018 and guest-starred as herself in episodes of Billions and The Morning Show during 2019.

So she channeled her capital into sports technology and wellness companies. She joined the percussive massage brand Therabody as a prominent investor, acquired a stake in the accessories brand Bala Bangles, and in 2020 she appeared as a guest panelist on the TV show Shark Tank, evaluating projects from up-and-coming entrepreneurs.

And boardrooms replaced clay courts.

In December 2022, luxury group Moncler appointed her to its board of directors to oversee brand strategy and expansion in Asian markets [1]. Two years later, at the end of 2024, an official vote confirmed her induction into the International Tennis Hall of Fame, with the ceremony set for 2025 in Newport [2].

That Moncler board closed fiscal year 2023 with consolidated revenue of two billion nine hundred eighty million euros.