ANNA205
Full Member
Davai_safin
Posts: 274
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Post by ANNA205 on Jul 21, 2004 8:33:33 GMT 3
Tennis all the rage in Russia
19/07/2004 14:04 - (SA) Moscow - The recent success of Russian women at Wimbledon and Roland Garros has turned tennis into the latest fashion here, as parents storm tennis schools with the hope of one day seeing their offspring win big.
"Our players' success turns parents' heads. They think all it takes is their child swinging a racket and a million dollars will be as good as in their pockets," sighed Vladimir Kamelzon, chief of the Russian Tennis Federation's trainers' council and director of a private tennis school in Moscow.
The tennis craze got a major boost after Anastasia Myskina won this year at Roland Garros and Maria Sharapova became the first Russian woman to win Wimbledon, prompting the media to trumpet a "Russian invasion" of the sport.
Shunned in the Soviet times as an individualist sport little suited to collective spirit, tennis bounced back during the presidency of Boris Yeltsin, a passionate tennis fan undaunted even by failing health.
It was Yevgeny Kafelnikov who first brought Russia tennis glory, first winning Roland Garros in 1996, then the Australian Open in 1999 and the Olympic Games in Sydney in 2000.
Marat Safin was not far behind, with his stunning victory at the US Open in 2000. Two years later, Russia won its first Davis Cup.
The seductive Anna Kournikova, who had never won a title and was known more for her looks, nevertheless also whetted public taste for tennis with her early promise.
Professional objectives
Nowadays, Russian women players are all the rage.
"They are more disciplined, they mature more quickly and show results earlier," Kamelzon explained, while watching a 12-year-old girl energetically return a serve by a boy peer.
"At 15 years old, boys have many temptations - alcohol, cigarettes, girls - but girls concentrate more on their professional objectives," he said.
Elen Chelidze is a young prodigy who will soon make her debut at a junior tournament in France, and tennis takes up every day of her life.
"I have no time to go to school, I study at home. Tennis is like a job for me," she explained, confessing to a dream of "becoming the world's number one racket."
Some 70 girls and boys aged between six and 16 attend Kamelzon's Belokamennaya school, founded in 1995 in a bid to produce professional sportsmen.
"There are many talents in Russia, but hundreds of youngsters go to study abroad, where conditions are better. And they stay there, like Tatyana Golovin who now plays for France," Kamelzon said.
Trainers deplore the insufficiency and poor state of tennis courts in Russia, whose harsh climate does not allow open courts to be used before May and after September, thus raising rent prices.
"We are forced to hold junior tournaments in Turkey," complained Natalya Rozhkova, a Belokamennaya trainer.
"A great number of our players train abroad, but they had been started off in Russian schools," Kamelzon said.
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Post by Damita on Aug 1, 2004 15:50:31 GMT 3
New article about Russian tennis (female players that come from Moscow to be more precise):
Russia's unlikely tennis nursery
By MARK MacKINNON
From Saturday's Globe and Mail
Moscow — The Spartak tennis club hardly looks like the breeding ground for a generation of tennis stars.
The road into the club, tucked away in a leafy part of north Moscow, is a muddy, potholed mess. Broken bricks and litter line the sides of the road. Stagnant pools of water provide a playground for thirsty mosquitoes. Stray dogs wander where they choose.
At the end of the road, a clutch of small buildings sits hidden amid the trees of Sokolniki Park, their painted walls flaking in the afternoon sun. The place has the feel of an abandoned summer camp.
It's only when you leave your car behind and follow the sound of grunts and squeals emerging from the trees that you get the true sense of the place.
Around every bend is another tennis court where dozens of kids and teenagers, a high number of them pint-sized girls, are smashing ball after ball back at their coaches.
The courts aren't in top condition either. Weeds poke through the clay in spots and the metal fences that surround the courts are in danger of rusting away completely. Yet the Spartak club has had uncommon success in pumping out stars — including French Open winner Anastasia Myskina and runner-up Elena Dementieva, both of whom will play in Montreal next week — on a shoestring budget.
Judging by its track record, some of these kids may one day be showing off what they learned here under the bright lights of Roland Garros or the All-England Club.
Despite a hand-to-mouth existence since the fall of the Soviet Union, the Spartak club has emerged as perhaps the world's premier tennis academy for women, as its graduates head a flock of Russians who are beginning to dominate the women's professional tour.
The club's most famous ex-student, Anna Kournikova, has had far less on-court success than those who have come after her, but as the trailblazer for the current crop of Russian tennis stars, tennis's semi-retired pinup girl lent the Spartak club its nickname, "the Anna factory."
In the run-up to their clash in the all-Russian final of this year's French Open, Ms. Myskina and Ms. Dementieva recalled playing each other as 10-year-olds at the Spartak club, with a piece of pizza going to the winner. Ms. Myskina won in Paris. The two will have a chance to resume their lifelong rivalry next week at the Rogers Cup in Montreal, where they will be joined by other Russian stars, including 17-year-old Wimbledon champ Maria Sharapova.
When the pair battled it out on centre court at the French Open, the coaches who watched them grow up on the courts gathered around a television set in Moscow to take the measure of how far their charges had come. They were a proud bunch.
"We're poor, the country's poor, the tennis school is poor. There's not enough financing, not just for tennis, but for all sports," says Igor Volkov, a senior coach at Spartak. He laughs heartily when the power in his office cuts out, as if on cue. "But we're rich in a different way. We're rich in children and we're rich in coaches."
The coach Ms. Myskina, 23, and Ms. Dementieva, 22, both credit for much of their success is Rosa Safina, the mother of the mercurial Marat Safin, Russia's top male tennis player. Like most of the other coaches here — many of whom are women — Ms. Safina was a national team member in the Soviet era, and says that the most important thing she tries to pass on is the desire to win that the Soviet system instilled in her.
"Maybe there's not a Russian style of tennis now, but there's a Russian character. A desire to achieve results," she said, watching attentively as her daughter, world No. 41 Dinara Safina, returns serve after serve on Spartak's Court No. 7. Dinara will miss the Montreal tournament while recovering from a bad back, but the 18-year-old is seen as having the potential to one day be a top-10 player.
If she ever makes it, she'll be joining a crowd of her compatriots at the top. Eight of the 32 women's seeds at Wimbledon this year were Russians, the most from any country. Four are ranked among the WTA Top-10: Ms. Myskina at No. 5, Ms. Dementieva at No. 6, Ms. Sharapova at No. 8 and Svetlana Kuznetsova, who won the doubles title with veteran Martina Navratilova last year in Montreal, at No. 9.
Two other Russians, Nadia Petrova and Spartak product Vera Zvonareva, are No. 12 and No. 15.
More are on the way. Seventeen-year-old Maria Kirilenko won the 2002 junior U.S. Open and junior Canadian Open and another 17-year-old, Vera Douchevina captured the junior version of Wimbledon that year, defeating Ms. Sharapova in the final.
"I think the success of the Russian girls is determined by the women coaches. Nowhere in the world there are so many female coaches, in the USA they are mostly men," said Andrei Myskin, father of the French Open champ Ms. Myskina. "Yes, the [Spartak] tennis school doesn't have any money ..... but the school has unique atmosphere of family house, warmth, good technical training."
Spartak, of course, isn't the only proven route to the top of the tennis world for Russia's emerging crop of young stars. Ms. Petrova spent much of her youth in Egypt. The Siberian-born Ms. Sharapova trained in the United States.The cost of travelling around Europe going to tournaments is prohibitive for some of the players. Ms. Myskina, the daughter of a policeman, has had a private "sponsor" — she has said that it's a bank but that she doesn't know which one — since early in her career that helps pay her expenses. Dinara Safina and several other stars have been forced to take the same route to raise cash for their careers.
Mr. Volkov, the senior coach, says the desire to escape the poverty that surrounds them may be what separates Spartak's kids from those in tennis clubs in richer countries.
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Post by MariaV on Aug 1, 2004 16:00:34 GMT 3
Thanks for the article Damita and welcome back from the vacation!  |
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Post by sirius on Aug 1, 2004 16:30:51 GMT 3
thanks damita...nice to hear news about dinara...now we know what she's up to... back in moscow training...
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mara
Full Member
i'll be very,very happy, to be u're friend
Posts: 228
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Post by mara on Aug 2, 2004 14:49:33 GMT 3
thanks damita!but wat about dina's issues about the training?i know she was not sattisfied abut her training and tournements results!
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Post by sirius on Aug 2, 2004 15:29:05 GMT 3
thanks damita!but wat about dina's issues about the training?i know she was not sattisfied abut her training and tournements results! well...the poor thing's been injured. so i guess while in the recovery period, she'd have had loads of time to rethink her game plan and training and stuff |
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Post by SAFINNO1 on Sept 12, 2004 20:02:35 GMT 3
sorry for dragging up a old forum but i heard some rumours that when they were younger Kournikova and Safin both coached by Marats mum had a affair. When they were about teenagers
Is it true or were they very very close friends and if they still are
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Post by Vassily on Sept 12, 2004 22:41:21 GMT 3
sorry for dragging up a old forum but i heard some rumours that when they were younger Kournikova and Safin both coached by Marats mum had a affair. When they were about teenagers Is it true or were they very very close friends and if they still are It's true. Many Russian women were trained by Safina at one time. Myskina and Anna was one of them. I think Dementieva was there too (but for less time). I'm not sure about Zvonareva. i think I read that she trained there for a few weeks too, but I'm not sure that it was a reliable source. And Marat's relationship to Anna, well they were friends before. I don't think that they talk a lot now, but I think that they atleast have positive attitude towards eachother. Something Marat said about Anna: "I love it when people say 'Oh, it's Anna's image," says Marat Safin, a top men's player who grew up with her in Moscow. "I like Anna, but it's no image. She's been like that all her life. Since she was a little girl she is thinking she is the best and the prettiest." And there's something about liking and respecting her, but not wishing to marry her. Sorry have no time for that. |
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Post by sirius on Sept 13, 2004 3:05:18 GMT 3
sorry for dragging up a old forum but i heard some rumours that when they were younger Kournikova and Safin both coached by Marats mum had a affair. When they were about teenagers Is it true or were they very very close friends and if they still are nothing between them besides platonic friendship. at least, as far as we know. marat once said or hinted at least, that anna wasn't his type.anyway, not really my problem. dasha's way better. |
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Post by SAFINNO1 on Sept 16, 2004 19:47:09 GMT 3
nothing between them besides platonic friendship. at least, as far as we know. marat once said or hinted at least, that anna wasn't his type.anyway, not really my problem. dasha's way better. Finally someone who agrees with me by saying Anna is not the sexiest women in tennis. |
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Post by Magda on Sept 16, 2004 19:57:21 GMT 3
Finally someone who agrees with me by saying Anna is not the sexiest women in tennis. now that's surprising  . I think you're the first man that I know who says that Anna is not the sexiest |
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Post by christina on Sept 16, 2004 21:26:59 GMT 3
now that's surprising . I think you're the first man that I know who says that Anna is not the sexiest oh, i dunno, i dont think my bro thinks she all that.....n a loada guys sat near me in a cafe on day after sharapova won gizmo were all like omg she's fit, but then they were those kinda guys  |
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Post by tall_one on Sept 17, 2004 5:59:11 GMT 3
now that's surprising . I think you're the first man that I know who says that Anna is not the sexiest lol, he isn't the 1st, one of my roommates doesn't even think she is pretty, the other thinks she is a goddess though, lol |
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Post by sirius on Sept 17, 2004 16:22:51 GMT 3
lol, he isn't the 1st, one of my roommates doesn't even think she is pretty, the other thinks she is a goddess though, lol which one says what?? lol |
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Post by tall_one on Sept 17, 2004 17:46:16 GMT 3
lol, pat adores her, jeff doesn't
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. I think you're the first man that I know who says that Anna is not the sexiest 
*sigh* 
