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On 20 Jan 2022, No COVID Lies <bob7duncan@gmail.com> posted some news:ssdjqb$gthq$117@news.freedyn.de:

The steroids just don't work like they used to.

She walked onto the court late on a gray and chilly afternoon with that
rocking gait that has become so familiar to tennis fans over the past 25
years. With her tennis bag on her shoulder, she pulled at the ends of an elastic band to get in some last-minute upper-body stretches.

Venus Williams, a five-time Wimbledon singles champion and a nine-time finalist, was back on Centre Court on Monday at age 43, vying to become
one of the oldest women to win a main draw singles match at the sport’s
oldest Grand Slam event.

That is not how the day went. It ultimately left her limping, an injured
symbol of a couple of undeniable truths about this era of tennis.

The first: More players are stretching their careers longer than they ever have, into their late 30s and, in the case of the Williams sisters, into
their early 40s, thanks to better training, nutrition and compensation. Caroline Wozniacki, 32, a former world No. 1, announced last month that
she was returning to tennis after retiring in 2020 and having two
children.

The second: It’s difficult to stay healthy and win in this brutal sport in
your late 30s and early 40s, unless your name is Novak Djokovic.

There were members of the older set scattered all across the All England
Club on Monday, the first day of Wimbledon, and not simply in the
television booths. Williams took Centre Court after Djokovic, 36, had
begun yet another title defense in his usual fashion, beating Pedro Cachín
of Argentina in straight sets. The American player John Isner, 38, lost in
four sets on Court 16 to Jaume Munar of Spain, but two courts over, on
Court 18, Stan Wawrinka, another 38-year-old, was giving a clinic to Emil Ruusuvuori, eliminating the 24-year-old Finn in straight sets.

Williams came up short in her effort, a hard-luck, 6-4, 6-3 loss to Elina Svitolina of Ukraine in which Williams aggravated an injured right knee
early in the match. Williams never regained the form she had shown in the match’s first few minutes, when she grabbed an early lead and gave every
sign that a win for the old guard might be in the cards. Last month,
Williams, ranked 558th in the world, beat a player ranked in the top 50
for the first time in four years, outlasting Camila Giorgi of Italy in a third-set tiebreaker in Birmingham, England.

The victory helped Williams earn a wild-card entry into the Wimbledon tournament, which she won in five of nine appearances from 2000 to 2008.
She made the women’s singles final as recently as 2017, and she has not
given any indication that she is pointing at a certain end.

“I’m a competitor,” a somber and shaken Williams said in her postmatch
news conference. “That’s what I do for a living.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/03/sports/tennis/wimbledon-venus-
williams.html

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