WIMBLEDON champion Arantxa Sánchez Vicario's husband has announced he wants a divorce and has filed for custody of their two children, claiming the retired tennis star is 'not in psychological conditions' to care for them properly.
Arantxa and her husband Josep Santacana have had a turbulent few years for various reasons – the tennis star fell out with her family over her choice of partner as they did not trust him, even hiring private detectives who found out Santacana had no assets whatsoever but was very heavily in debt.
Once the information came to light, Arantxa paid off his debts and put him in charge of managing her own finances, which included US$17 million in prize money over the course of her career.
Arantxa's own economic situation immediately went on the slide, leading to the couple's having to sell their house in Formentera, their villa in Barcelona and their yacht, and she currently has large debts of her own – around €1.7 million to the Spanish tax authorities and another €7.5m to the Bank of Luxembourg.
The sportswoman then ended up suing her parents after they lost an eight-figure sum of her money and, when her father Emilio Sánchez died in 2016, a member of Arantxa's family attacked Santacana at the funeral, leading to Arantxa being ordered to leave and her mother, Marisa, fainting.
Now, Josep Santacana has taken all his wife's assets, including her tennis trophies, and she now lives on her €3,000 a month from her role as sports director at the Metropolitan School of Miami and with her ad hoc work with Latin American TV stations as sports commentator.
Santacana has claimed she is 'an unfit mother' to Arantxa, nine and Leo, seven and has filed for custody of them.
Arantxa won the women's doubles at Wimbledon in 1995 with her game partner, the Czech Republic's Jana Novotná, beating the USA's Gigi Fernández and Belarus' Natasha Zvereva.
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