Serena Williams has been awarded the 2025 Princess of Asturias Award for Sports. This was decided by the jury, chaired by Teresa Perales, which met for two days in Oviedo to choose the winner from among the 30 candidates from 13 nationalities
The 23-time tennis Grand Slam winner succeeds Carolina Marin, Olympic badminton gold medallist in Rio 2016, three-time world champion and eight-time continental champion (seven in European Championships and one in European Games).
Serena Williams’ sporting merits are unquestionable. She won 73 titles and 23 majors in a career that spanned four decades: from her professional debut at the age of 14 in October 1995 at the Bell Challenge in Quebec (she lost 6-1, 6-1 to Anne Miller) to her third-round defeat at the 2022 US Open to Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic (7-5, 6-7(4), 6-1).On July 8, 2002, Serena reached number one in the world for the first time. She would be number one for the last time in May 2017. She spent 319 weeks at the top of the rankings, 186 of them consecutively. She won four Olympic gold medals (singles in London 2012 and doubles in Sydney 2000, Beijing 2008 and London 2012). In doubles, she won 14 Grand Slams, plus two more in mixed doubles.
In 1999, she won her first Grand Slam: the US Open. In 2002, she was crowned at Roland Garros and Wimbledon. The Australian Open would come in 2003. She achieved the first of her two consecutive Grand Slams (not in the same season) of her career. The second would come with the 2014 US Open and the first three majors of the calendar in 2015.
Serena Williams: from child prodigy to social icon
Her story is that of a racquet prodigy, as was cinematically portrayed in ‘The Williams Method’. She reigned on the court before and after becoming a mother because motherhood is not the end of a sporting career. The Williams style (that of Serena and her sister Venus) altered the foundations of women’s tennis: serves that approached 200 km/h or shots supported by a physical power always in search of the ‘winner’.
Serena put her image and personality at the service of what she considered fair. Her company, Serena Ventures, supports initiatives such as the construction of schools in Africa and social resources in Compton, the Los Angeles ghetto neighborhood where she grew up. She normalized her figure with clothes that she designed herself to send the message of acceptance to your body and size in the face of the bombardment to which those who deviate from the canons of beauty established by posturing are subjected.
Serena Williams’ candidacy was chosen from the other 29 submitted. For the second year in a row, the award goes to a woman after Carolina Marin was honored in 2024. The jury for this edition was made up of Teresa Perales (president); Paloma del Rio (secretary); Carlos Carpio, deputy director of MARCA, Teresa Bernadas, Joaquin Folch-Rusinol, Vicente Jimenez, Santiago Nolla, Jennifer Pareja, Edurne Pasaban, Samuel Sanchez, Sitapha Savane, Alberto Suarez, Joan Vehils and Theresa Zabell.
Serena Williams: ninth woman awarded and fourth female tennis player
Among the recipients of the Sports Awards, established in 1987, are Sebastian Coe, the Olympic refugee team, the All Blacks, the Gasol brothers (Pau and Marc), Haile Gebrselassie, Rafa Nadal, Fernando Alonso, Eliud Kipchoge, Carl Lewis, Carlos Sainz and Severiano Ballesteros, among others.
It is the ninth time that the award has gone to a woman, and the fourth tennis player to receive it after Martina Navratilova (1994), Arantxa Sanchez Vicario (1998) and Steffi Graf (1999). The list of female athletes in the list is completed by athletes Hassiba Boulmerka (1995) and Yelena Isinbayeva (2009), skier Lindsey Vonn (2019) and Paralympic swimmer Teresa Perales (2021) and the aforementioned Carolina Marin (2024). Tennis has received this award for the fifth time after Rafa Nadal won it in 2008.
Princess of Asturias Award for Sports
- 1987 Sebastian Coe (Athletics)
- 1988 Juan Antonio Samaranch (Olympism)
- 1989 Seve Ballesteros (Golf)
- 1990 Sito Pons (Motorcycling)
- 1991 Sergey Bubka (Athletics)
- 1992 Miguel Indurain (Cycling)
- 1993 Javier Sotomayor (Athletics)
- 1994 Martina Navratilova (Tennis)
- 1995 Hassiba Boulmerka (Athletics)
- 1996 Carl Lewis (Athletics)
- 1997 Spanish Marathon Team (Athletics)
- 1998 Arantxa Sanchez-Vicario (Tennis)
- 1999 Steffi Graf (Tennis)
- 2000 Lance Armstrong (Cycling)
- 2001 Manel Estiarte (Water polo)
- 2002 Brazil National Football Team
- 2003 Tour de France (Cycling)
- 2004 Hicham El Guerrouj (Athletics)
- 2005 Fernando Alonso (Motorsport)
- 2006 Spain men’s national basketball team
- 2007 Michael Schumacher (Motorsport)
- 2008 Rafael Nadal (Tennis)
- 2009 Yelena Isinbayeva (Athletics)
- Spain national football team (Football)
- 2011 Haile Gebrselassie (Athletics)
- 2012 Iker Casillas/Xavi Hernandez (Football)
- 2013 Jose Maria Olazabal (Golf)
- 2014 New York City Marathon (Athletics)
- 2015 Pau Gasol / Marc Gasol (Basketball)
- 2016 Javier Gomez Noya (Triathlon)
- 2017 New Zealand Rugby Team
- 2018 Reinhold Messner / Krzysztof Wielicki (Mountaineering)
- 2019 Lindsey Vonn (Skiing)
- 2020 Carlos Sainz (Rallies)
- 2021 Teresa Perales (Paralympic swimming)
- 2022 Foundation and Refugee Olympic Team (Olympism)
- 2023 Eliud Kipchoge (Athletics)
- 2024 Carolina Marin (Badminton)
- 2025 Serena Williams (Tennis)
The Sports Award is the fifth of the eight prizes awarded annually by the Princess of Asturias Foundation, after the Communication and Humanities Award was given to the German philosopher and essayist of South Korean origin Byung-Chul Han, the Literature Award to the writer Eduardo Mendoza, the Social Sciences Award to the American sociologist and demographer Douglas Massey and the Arts Award to the Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide.
Like the rest of the awards, the prize consists of a reproduction of a sculpture by Joan Miro -a representative symbol of the award-, a cash prize of 50,000 euros, a diploma and a badge.
After the Sports Award, the Concordia (June 4), Scientific and Technical Research (June 12) and International Cooperation (June 18) awards will still be decided. In its 43rd edition, 354 candidates from 60 nationalities have been proposed for the Princess of Asturias Awards, which will be presented at the Campoamor Theater in Oviedo in October.
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