Grand Slam winner who won Porsche and has £14m prize money flogging belongings for £4

Nov 26, 2025 - 20:30

Look after the pennies, and the tens of millions of pounds will look after themselves.

That may well be the motto of Jelena Ostapenko, who is selling some of her belongings for as little as £4, despite being one of the world’s best tennis players.

Ostapenko is still at the top of her game, but has another side hobby too

jelena-ostapenko sells tennis belongings — On her side Instagram account she sells belongings for as little as £4

The 28-year-old hit her career peak so far in 2017 with a French Open final win over Simona Halep to claim the honour as a Grand Slam winner.

A Wimbledon semi-finalist who’s also gone deep at the Australian Open and US Open, the Latvian recorded a career-high ranking of fifth, and is still one of the best women on the tour at world No.24, making her seeded for majors.

That combines for a prize pot of £14million, putting her 32nd on the all-time earnings list for women.

Yet Ostapenko has still been topping up her income with some incomparable sales.

Many of her 200,000 Instagram followers have quickly picked up side accounts, one for baking and another ‘j.o.clothes1997’ where she’s ‘giving a second life to some stuff’.

Among her sales on the account were a pair of very well used Gucci trainers for £245, while she’s also flogged perfume and old tennis outfits, but things even go for as low as £4 for a pair of storage boxes.

The latter sales becomes even more incredible considering the same day that she put the boxes online she collected a Porsche Macan Turbo worth £100,000.

Ostapenko posted her new car on her main account, having won it by beating world No.1 Aryna Sabalenka at the Porsche Grand Prix final in Stuttgart.

Ostapenko’s impressive record

There she showed that class is permanent, also downing Iga Swiatek to become only the second woman to beat the world No.1 and No.2 on clay at the same event, with Serena Williams being the other.

This year she’s taken home £1.4m in prize money, and we haven’t even factored in sponsorship and other earnings.

Helping her record such a figure was another win over Swiatek at the Qatar Open in February, making it six wins and zero defeats against the Polish phenomenon.

The usually mild mannered Swiatek destroyed one of her rackets after the comprehensive defeat, with Ostapenko producing a hilarious reaction.

It isn’t unusual for Ostapenko to be part of such viral scenes, as she showed at Wimbledon last year.

During a quarter-final defeat to Barbora Krejcikova, she could be seen waving away someone from her box, and her performance then instantly improved for a comeback and tie-break.

Over a year later at the US Open, she was once again lighting up phone feeds across the world due to a furious outburst at Taylor Townsend.

Ostapenko claimed her opponent didn’t apologise after the net helped her earn a late point during the win, and told her so to her face in eyebrow-raising scenes.

Ostapenko’s outburst quickly travelled around the world

Speaking post-defeat, she said: “I told my opponent that she was very disrespectful as she had a net ball in a very deciding moment and didn’t say sorry, but her answer was that she doesn’t have to say sorry at all.

“There are some rules in tennis which most of the players follow and it was [the] first time ever that this happened to me on tour. If she plays in her homeland it doesn’t mean that she can behave and do whatever she wants.”

However, things took a more serious turn when Townsend claimed Ostapenko called her ‘uneducated’, a comment many suggested had racial undertones.

The Latvian responded, writing: “I was never racist in my life and I respect all nations of people in the world. For me, it doesn’t matter where you come from.”