NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Celebrity tennis player Anna Kournikova soon may retire from competitive athletics to pursue an entertainment career.
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| Anna's sports bra |
The BBC reported Tuesday that the Russian-born beauty "has given her strongest hint yet" that her playing days are over.
"I do not want to go on playing unless I can participate 100 percent," she said last week at the World Music Awards in Monte Carlo, according to the BBC. "I can't cope with the rigorous schedule of major tournaments."
Suffering from chronic back pain, Kournikova, 22, has entered just five tournaments in 2003. She missed both Wimbledon and the U.S. Open, and currently is number 302 on the World Tennis Association's ranking of women players. She has won barely $40,000 in prize money this year, according to the WTA.
Although she ranked among the top 10 players in the world in the late 1990s, Kournikova has never won a WTA title in singles. She has, however, been a standout on the sponsorship circuit, earning a reported $15 million a year in endorsements.
In August, for example, she signed a deal with Britain's Shock Absorber Inc. to roll out Kournikova's Multiway Sports Bra. Online retailer Amazon.com bought exclusive U.S. sales rights for the first month after the bra's release.
She has also served as pitchwoman for such advertisers as Omega watches, Adidas sneakers, and Berlei lingerie. According to the search engine Lycos (for whom she has also done ads), there are more than 89,000 individual Web sites devoted to Kournikova.
If retirement from sport is at hand, Kournikova's celebrity could lead to a career in acting or as a television announcer.
"I'd love to appear in something like 'Sex and the City'," she told reporters. "I get offered lots of those sorts of jobs, but I've never had time to pursue them because of my tennis."
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