Kournikova was secretly married, says ex-lover

Tennis ace Anna Kournikova secretly married her lover Sergei Fedorov two years ago but the couple have since split up and no longer speak, the ice hockey star has claimed.

Fedorov said the couple were now divorced and he no longer has contact with the 21-year-old Russian beauty.

“We were married, albeit brief, and we are now divorced,” he told the Hockey News magazine.

“I don’t keep in touch with her and I’m not going to be dating anyone for a while.”

The Russian pair had a high profile and occasionally rocky relationship during which Kournikova was romantically linked to another Russian ice hockey star, Pavel Bure.

“I still don’t know what it was,” Fedorov said. “I read only in magazines what was going on and I basically tried to break up.

“But she had an explanation and I really believed that it was true and I, sort of, we patched things up.”

Speculation that Kournikova had tied the knot began after she was spotted wearing what appeared to be a wedding ring at a tennis tournament in 2001.

Fedorov’s mother later told reporters the pair had been married in secret ceremony a Moscow registery office.

But the tennis star’s manager and her father dismissed the claims.

Kournikova, who has huge modelling and advertising deals for designer brands such as Omega watches and Berlei bras, also dismissed the marriage rumours, claiming a wedding would have upset her sporting career.