Serena Williams has resisted saying publicly that she has retired from tennis and the finality that would bring, but now she has another reason to stay away from competition in the near future.
Amid the costume-themed glitz of the Met Gala on Monday night Williams announced, both on the red carpet and on social media, that she was pregnant with her second child.
She attended the event with her husband, Alexis Ohanian, a co-founder of Reddit, and said in a post on Instagram that she “was so excited when Anna Wintour invited the 3 of us to the Met Gala.”
On the red carpet before the event, Ohanian put his hand on his wife’s stomach in a gesture indicating a pregnancy. Williams also posted a series of portraits that included an image of her cradling her stomach with both hands.
Williams was not the only pregnant celebrity at the gala. The singer Rihanna, who wore a white Valentino gown on Monday night, made her pregnancy public during her halftime performance at the Super Bowl in February.
Williams and Ohanian had their first child, Alexis Olympia Ohanian Jr., in 2017. Williams had won the Australian Open that year while roughly two months pregnant.
She returned to tennis and made four more Grand Slam finals in 2018 and 2019, although she did not add to her total of 23 Grand…
