Serena Williams is back.
The tennis titan announced on June 1 that she is ending her retirement and will play doubles in the HSBC Championships on June 8 in London, marking Williams’ first competition since she stepped away from the sport in 2022.
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Williams’ legendary career already included another major comeback. After she won the 2017 Australian Open while pregnant, Williams gave birth to her daughter Olympia later that year and, despite complications from a pulmonary embolism, returned to the court in December 2017. She made the Wimbledon finals in 2018 and 2019.
Williams is now preparing to return again, this time as a 44-year-old mother of two (her second daughter, Adira, was born in 2023). Her story is one of many incredible comeback stories in women’s sports, which has no shortage of resilient athletes.
Here are some other notable comebacks as we await Williams’ return to the court.
Lindsey Vonn
Vonn was 41 and coming off partial knee replacement surgery when she came out of retirement to compete in the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympic Games. The alpine skier tore her left ACL while training for the Games and competed anyway, but suffered a horrific crash that required Vonn to be airlifted off the mountain and left her hospitalized for weeks.
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Even after that, Vonn is still contemplating racing again, stating that her age and ACL injury had no bearing on the crash.
Brittney Griner
In 2022, WNBA star Brittney Griner was detained for almost 10 months in a Russian prison after Russian customs officials found cannabis vape cartridges in her luggage while she was playing there during the WNBA offseason.
After the U.S. government negotiated her release in a prisoner swap, Griner returned to the court for the 2023 WNBA season and was named an All-Star along with Comeback Player of the Year. In 2024, she put together another All-Star WNBA season and helped Team USA win Olympic gold in Paris.
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Simone Biles
Biles took a two-year hiatus from gymnastics to focus on her mental health after battling “the twisties” that forced her to withdraw from the Tokyo Olympics. She returned as dominant as ever in the Paris Games, where she won three gold medals and a silver medal and officially became the most decorated gymnast in history with 41 combined World and Olympic medals. Biles also became an outspoken advocate for athlete health.
Dara Torres
One comeback wasn’t enough for Torres. She swam in three consecutive Olympics – 1984, 1988 and 1992 – before a seven-year hiatus, then returned and won five medals at the 2000 Olympics in Sydney. She took another break after that, and was 41 when she returned to swim at the 2008 Beijing Games, where she captured three more medals.
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Allyson Felix
Felix, the most decorated track and field star in American history, announced in April that she is coming out of retirement to pursue a comeback for the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. Felix retired in 2022 with a total of 11 Olympic medals from five Games, including a bronze medal in the 400 meter won in Tokyo two years after she gave birth to her first child in 2018.
Felix had her second child in 2024 and is now attempting to qualify for her sixth Olympics. She will be 42 in 2028.
(This story will be updated)
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Serena Williams return highlights iconic women’s sports comebacks
