The highest-earning female athlete of all-time, Williams drew huge crowds throughout her career and is a figure who has truly transcended her sport.

Equipped with arguably the best serve ever seen in the women’s game, Williams was known for her big groundstrokes, strong return of serve and superb movement.

After retiring, Williams largely kept away from the sport and gave birth to her second daughter in 2023.

Last year, she told the Today Show in the US about losing 31lb (14kg) over the previous eight months.

She said she had to look at her extra weight as “an opponent”. Despite “training five hours a day” and “running, walking, biking, stair climbing”, she told the show she had no other choice but to “try something different”.

Williams would not say which weight loss drug she was taking, although she had just become a spokesperson for Ro, a company which sells GLP-1 brands like Wegovy and Zepbound (known as Mounjaro in the UK) through its weight-loss programme. Her husband, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian, is also an investor.

Williams said she was seeing the benefit of her hard work at the gym, was training for a half-marathon and “running farther than I ever had”.