WORLD SPORTS STARS

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Karolina Sprem Croatian tennis player pics

Karolina Šprem born October 25, 1984 in Varaždin is a Croatian tennis player.
She has won eight titles (seven singles, one doubles) all at the ITF level. She has not won any titles on the WTA Tour. Career highlight is a quarterfinal appearance at Wimbledon in 2004 where she defeated two-time champion, four-time finalist and then-world No. 8 Venus Williams in the second round before losing to Lindsay Davenport in the quarterfinal. The umpire of her match against Venus Williams awarded her an extra point in the second set tie break. He was relieved of his duties after the end of the match.[citation needed]
In her first two WTA-tournaments she reached the finals, however in late 2004 her form declined. She began training with Borna Bikic, who at that time was brother of the boyfriend of Jelena Dokić.
In late 2007 Šprem announced a permanent split from Bikic, and returned to her old coach. Still, she had to cope with a serious elbow injury. In April 2008 she successfully returned to the pro-tour winning in Amelia Island over Ai Sugiyama and top 10 player Daniela Hantuchová, before falling to Lindsay Davenport in the third round.
In July 2008, Šprem made the semi-finals of a Tier III event in Budapest, eventually losing to Andreja Klepač.
In 2009, Karolina came back in the top 100, with a main draw entry in the Australian Open, Winning Qualifier rounds at Paris and the Sony Ericsson open. Karolina has won 2 ITF single tournamnets, Beating Kirsten Flipkens of Belgium in Biberach, Germany and defeating Viktoriya Kutuzova in Torhout, Belgium
At the start of 2009, Šprem changed from a Wilson K-factor Blade 98 to a Tecnifibre racquet.
In 2010, she scored one of her biggest wins in years when she defeated 25th seed Anabel Medina Garrigues at the 2010 Australian Open. She followed this up with a tight loss to Australian wildcard Casey Dellacqua
At the 2010 Open GDF Suez in Paris Šprem won through three rounds of qualifying to reach the main draw of the Premier event. In the first round she defeated Swiss no. 2 Timea Bacsinszky before losing to 6th seed Shahar Pe'er in the second round.
In 2011, Sprem started her campaign with a first round qualifying win at the Brisbane International defeating Doi of Japan in 3 sets. In the second round, she lost to Anna Tatishvili in 3 sets. Her next tournament was the Medibank International where she defeated American Christina McHale again in the qualis in a rain interrupted match. She the lost to Ekaterina Makarova 7-6 6-3. She now faces Chanelle Scheepers of South Africa in the first round at the Australian Open
Contents
* 1 Career statistics
o 1.1 WTA singles finals (3)
o 1.2 ITF singles finals (14)
o 1.3 ITF doubles final (1)
* 2 Grand Slam singles performance timeline
* 3 References
* 4 External links

Karolina Sprem

Thursday, July 7, 2011

anna kournikova media publicity

Media publicity
Anna Kournikova playing tennis in white outfit. Left hand is extended as if she has just tossed a ball and right hand is cocking back for the serve.
Kournikova preparing to serve
Most of Kournikova's fame has come from the publicity surrounding her looks and her personal life. During Kournikova's debut at the 1996 U.S. Open at the age of 15, the world noticed her beauty, and soon pictures of her appeared in numerous magazines worldwide.
In 2000, Kournikova became the new face for Berlei's shock absorber sports bras, and appeared in the "only the ball should bounce" billboard campaign. Photographs of her scantily-clad form have appeared in various men's magazines, including one in the much-publicized 2004 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue,[citation needed] where she posed in bikinis and swimsuits, and in other men's public ations such as FHM[citation needed] and Maxim.[citation needed] Kournikova was named one of People's 50 Most Beautiful People in 1998, 2000, 2002, and 2003,[citation needed] and was voted "hottest female athlete" and "hottest couple" (with Iglesias) on ESPN.com.[citation needed] In 2002 she also placed first in FHM's 100 Sexiest Women in the World in U.S. and UK editions.[citation needed] By contrast, ESPN—citing the degree of hype as compared to actual accomplishments as a singles player—ranked Kournikova 18th in its "25 Biggest Sports Flops of the Past 25 Years". Kournikova was also ranked #1 in the ESPN Classic series "Who's number 1?" when the series featured sport's most overrated athletes.

She continued to be the most searched athlete on the Internet through 2008 even though she had retired from the professional tennis circuit years earlier. After slipping from first to sixth among athletes in 2009, she moved back up to third place among athletes in terms of search popularity in 2010
In October 2010, Kournikova headed to NBC's The Biggest Loser where she led the contestants in a tennis-workout challenge. In May 2011, it was announced that Kournikova will join The Biggest Loser as a regular celebrity trainer in season 1
In November 2010, she became an American citizen

anna kournikova

Alberta brianti 2011 new pics

Alberta Brianti born April 5, 1980 in San Secondo Parmense is a professional female tennis player from Italy.
On June 13, 2011, Brianti achieved her career-high singles ranking of 55. She achieved her career high doubles ranking of 69 on April 4, 2011.
Contents
* 1 WTA Tour finals
o 1.1 WTA Tour singles finals (2)
o 1.2 WTA Tour doubles finals (2)
* 2 External links
WTA Tour final
WTA Tour singles finals (2)
Legend: Starting in 2009↓
Grand Slam (0/0)
WTA Championships (0/0)
Premier Mandatory (0/0)
Premier 5 (0/0)
Premier (0/0)
International (1/1)
Titles by Surface↓
Hard (0/1)
Grass (0/0)
Clay (1/0)
Carpet (0/0)

Alberta brianti

Sunday, June 26, 2011

maria sharapova 2005: Ascension to World No. 1

2005: Ascension to World No. 1
Sharapova at Indian Wells in 2005.

Sharapova started the year at the Australian Open, where she defeated fifth seed Svetlana Kuznetsova to reach the second Grand Slam semifinal of her career. Sharapova held match points in the third set of her semifinal match before losing to eventual champion Serena Williams. In February, Sharapova won back-to-back tournaments, the Toray Pan Pacific Open and the Qatar Total Open, her to reach the top three on the world rankings for the first time.
In the semifinals of the Tier I Pacific Life Open, Sharapova was defeated by Davenport 6–0, 6–0, the first time she had failed to win a game in a match. The following fortnight, she defeated former World No. 1 players Justine Henin and Venus Williams to reach the final at the Tier I NASDAQ-100 Open, where she lost to Kim Clijsters.
Sharapova made the semifinals of a clay-court tournament for the first time at the Internazionali BNL d'Italia, where she lost to Patty Schnyder. Sharapova would have become the World No. 1 for the first time had she won the tournament. Sharapova then reached the quarterfinals of the French Open for the second consecutive year, before losing to eventual champion Henin. On grass, Sharapova won her third title of the year when she successfully defended her title at the DFS Classic, defeating Jelena Janković in the final. As the defending champion at Wimbledon, Sharapova reached the semifinals without dropping a set and losing a service game just once, extending her winning streak on grass to 24 matches. However, she was then beaten by eventual champion Venus Williams.
A back injury sustained by World No. 1 Davenport at Wimbledon prevented her from playing tournaments during the summer hardcourt season, which meant she could not earn new ranking points to replace those that were expiring from the previous year. Sharapova, although also injured for much of this time, had far fewer points to defend, and so she became the first Russian woman to hold the World No. 1 ranking on August 22, 2005. Her reign lasted only one week, however, as Davenport reclaimed the top ranking after winning the Pilot Pen Tennis tournament.
As the top seed at the US Open, Sharapova lost in the semifinals to Kim Clijsters, meaning she had lost to the eventual champion in every Grand Slam of the season. However, she once again leapfrogged Davenport to take the World No. 1 ranking on September 12, 2005. She retained it for six weeks, but after playing few tournaments while injured, she again relinquished the ranking to Davenport. conclude the year, Sharapova failed to defend her title at the year-ending Sony Ericsson Championships, defeating Davenport in one of her round-robin matches but ultimately losing in the semifinals to eventual champion Amélie Mauresmo.

maria sharapova

Thursday, May 19, 2011

john cena professional wrestling career

Professional wrestling career
Training
Cena started training to become a professional wrestler in 2000 at the California-based "Ultimate University" operated by Ultimate Pro Wrestling. Once he was placed into an in-ring role, Cena began using a semi-robotic character known as The Prototype. Some of this period of his career was documented in the Discovery Channel program Inside Pro Wrestling School. While in UPW, Cena held the UPW Heavyweight Championship for just shy of a month in April 2000.In 2001, he signed a developmental contract with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and was assigned to its developmental territory Ohio Valley Wrestling (OVW).During his time there, Cena wrestled as both The Prototype and Mr. P, and held the OVW Heavyweight Championship for three months and the OVW Southern Tag Team Championship (with Rico Constantino) for two months.