Former tennis star Maria Sharapova has announced the birth of her first child Theodore, sharing a picture of the newborn along with her fiance.
“The most beautiful, challenging, and rewarding gift our little family could ask for,” Sharapova, who is engaged to British businessman Alexander Gilkes, said in a post on Instagram on Friday.
Maria Sharapova talked about the gender gap between the women’s and men’s Tours, in fact making a criticism of the WTA and ATP regarding the difference in prize money between the two tours. In Toronto for the second annual UNMATCHED: Gender Equity in Sports conference, the former tennis icon highlighted only 15-20% of the Tour offers parity, while the rest there is a large salary difference between men and women.
Sharapova, sharing the brutal truth about the gender gap in tennis, explained: “15-20 percent of the tour is equal. But where’s the rest of the 80 percent? It’s not even close to being equal. Unfortunately, those events don’t have the biggest media rights, they don’t have the visibility, so therefore, that subject of equality doesn’t even get a platform because not too many people know internationally these tournaments exist.”
