{{US tennis star Serena Williams said Wednesday that she hopes her African tour with elder sister Venus will encourage athletes on the continent to strive for excellence in their sport.}}<\/p>\n
The pair, who have won a combined 22 major women’s singles championships, are in Nigeria before heading to South Africa on Friday, in a two-country visit to promote women’s rights.<\/p>\n
“We would definitely love to see more athletes come out of Africa,”
\nSerena told journalists.<\/p>\n
“We were able to break the mould in a sport that was just really dominated by white people and to have a face of colour than can come in and dominate (shows) it doesn’t matter what your background is and where you come from,” she said.<\/p>\n
Serena, 31, has visited other African nations before, while Venus, 32, landed on the continent for the first time on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
“I’ve always wanted to come here,” said the elder Williams sister, adding that she expected to continue taking trips where athletic competition is not the primary focus.<\/p>\n
“When you get a little older, you start to realise that you want to help other people and that that is more important than the other dreams you may have had,” she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
{{US tennis star Serena Williams said Wednesday that she hopes her African tour with elder sister Venus will encourage athletes on the continent to strive for excellence in their sport.}} The pair, who have won a combined 22 major women’s singles championships, are in Nigeria before heading to South Africa on Friday, in a two-country […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[100],"byline":[170],"hashtag":[],"class_list":["post-3838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports","tag-africa","byline-igihe"],"bylines":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"contributors":[{"id":170,"name":"IGIHE","slug":"igihe","description":"","image":{"id":0,"url":"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/?s=96&d=mm&f=y&r=g","alt":"Default avatar","title":"Default avatar","caption":"","mime_type":"image\/jpeg","sizes":[]},"user_id":8}],"featured_image":null,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3838\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3838"},{"taxonomy":"byline","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/byline?post=3838"},{"taxonomy":"hashtag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new.igihe.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/hashtag?post=3838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}