What ever happened to Anna Kournikova? As soon as I could hang a poster of her in my room, she vanished from tennis. Anna was deemed the hottest female athlete in sports when she was playing tennis. Although most people despise her for her good looks and say that she was beautiful, but never any good at tennis, that is not correct.
Believe it or not, Anna was ranked pretty high in the early stages of her career. She reached as high as #8 in the world in 2000, and held the #1 doubles spot for a long time with Martina Hingis as her partner. She won the Australian Open in 1999 and 2002 in doubles play. Then, after feeling the pressure from not performing well in singles play, Anna started to fall from the ranks. She eventually hung up her tennis racket and Adidas skirt and did what many people are doing in today’s economy - changing jobs to find a career in modeling.
When Anna was still playing tennis, she faced tremendous pressure and constant attention by the media. Some even blame the amount of attention she received for her downfall in tennis. This is only one of many examples of how hard it is for professional athletes to deal with the pressure the media places upon them. Think of Alex Rodriguez’s constant media attention and the pressure of playing in New York for every Yankee and Met player and coach.
Athletes are placed in front of the public and used by the media in many ways. It is very demanding psychologically to deal with this and some athletes cannot handle it.
The video below in an interview with Anna Kournikova by a BBC interviewer when Anna was struggling with her game. It shows how athletes can let the constant pressure of the media get to them. And although I am still an Anna Kournikova fan at heart and believe the media attacked her for years, all athletes must maintain their composure and act accordingly in every situation. If you are presented with a question that you do not like or do not want to answer use the Rosenhaus, “next question” approach.
Sports Psychology Consultant Susan Zaro will be discussing the psychological rigors that athletes go through in her next piece on The Real Athlete Blog. Stay tuned!
Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSry-7C2qrU
Susan Zaro
07-20-2009Great athletes think like astronauts - they are focused on their goals. The interviewer only tried to focus Anna on the "noise" the distractions. An athlete has no obligation to answer a question from an interviewer that asks, "do you think you are doing too many commercials?" It's an amazingly shallow question and none of his business. She had no obligation to say, "oh by the way, commercials are really fun to make and I make about 500k per commercial." During this interview she held her ground as to what she was willing to share. There are boundaries, regarding business that she doesn't need to discuss. Sport is about entertainment and becoming known. From there the athlete can leverage the star factor by sticking to making records within the sport - or in Anna's situation, through commercial endorsement. She's done her work to get to this level of recognition as a player. I have no empathy for the interviewer in this situation. Athletes don't need to reveal "how they feel." It was a media hunt for something dramatic and fishing forsomething shallow or emotional from her. I do think she wasn't prepped well enough to have a "story line" that she could repeat in 9 different ways so the interviewer would realize he wasn't going to get any drama from the interview. I read that Lance Armstrong during this Tour de
France stopped talking to the media because they kept trying to put words into his mouth about his performance and the
supposedly competitiveness between himself and Alberto Contador. I understand the media's need to sell to consumers but the way they go about it frequently gives the media a bad reputation. You can educate and inform an audience by asking intelligent questions that an athlete would actually feel compelled and find worthwhile answering.
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