The story behind the tennis star, how her parents scaped from radioactivity and her visit to Belarús.
It was the middle of 2004, with the battered grass that you can see on the final matches at Wimbledon`s courts, a 17 years old russian girl appeared with plenty of power on every stroke and with an amazing winning mentality , dare to struggle with the American champion Serena William.
The young blonde made everyone got deaf with her shouts and made the crowd went crazy at the All England Tennis and Croquet club watching how the Californian was swept 6-1 and 6-4. Maria Sharapova went from went to anonymity to fame. Her tennis skills plus her Beauty suddenly placed her on the hot spot of the women’s circuit scene.
Today, the Siberian born 23 years ago is looking forward to recover from a Left shoulder surgery that it is delaying her comeback to the firsts places of the WTA rankings. But there is another story that not so many know about the 6'2” giant that envolves her directly with the nuclear issue that Japan is living these hours.
Sharapova´s story begins an year before her Birth. On april 26, 1986, the reactor number four of the Chernobyl nuclear center, placed at north Ukraine, overheated its core and the radiation inside soared to the atmosphere.
Yuri and Yelena, Sharapova´s parents, were a construction worker and a secretary that live in Chechersk, on the province of Gomel (186 miles from Ukraine border). The radioactive cloud directed to their city, many people went sick, Yelena too, and four month after Chernobyl found herself pregnant and Yury decided it was time to leave the zone to care about their unborn daughter. “"I still talk to my mother about that, it pops up in conversation from time to time," Sharapova, 19, said. "She has told me that she was really worried about the radiation possibly affecting me before I was born, and about all the possible illnesses and cancers. My grandmother, Galina, still lives in Gomel. She's my dad's mother. I'm still in contact with her, I still talk to her quite a lot. I was too young to appreciate all the details, apart from the fact that there had been a big disaster, but as I grew older I became more interested, wanting to help people who had been affected or been born here”, explained Sharapova.
Nyagan,a north-western town in Siberia, Russia, a place where temperatures reaches – 40 C, was one of the few places that the family Could afford because of the fragile economic reality they lived in those days, and there, a week before the first aniversary of Chenobyl accident, Maria Yurievna Sharapova was born.
The winner of three Grand Slam titles, became a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations development programme and has donated 350.000 dollars to help people on the affected areas in Gomel and promote sport activities for kids. "I'd like to do more of this, when my sports career is over.Tennis is only a game, but it is my platform, my opportunity to help people”, said the russian.
Last year, “Mascha”, how people shorten names in Russia, visited for the first time in her life the place from wich her parents moved away 25 years ago. On her arrival, she visited kids that suffer from the effects of radiation and went to the art center where children learn how to keep a clean environment. “My connection here is very real. It's probably one of the closest places I can call home. Even though I didn't actually live here steadily, all my family are from here.I can have dresses, cars, my own fashion label, but it doesn't necessarily make me happy”, admitted Sharapova.
This is a ghost town in the middle of nowhere, and nothing seems to make it change, that`s why the best we can give people is hope, explained Yuri
The blonde who moved to USA at age of six believes that if Chernobyl had never happened she would not have been a tennis player. "If Chernobyl had never happened, my life would have been very different."I probably wouldn't even be playing tennis. When I look back at what happened, I just think, 'Oh, my God, I just can't believe it. I feel so lucky that I got out of it, that I got out of there'. So many people didn't get out of it. There were so many people who were affected by it, so many who died, and it's just terrible to think about it, it's incredible really. I am lucky to be alive and well. I remember my mum and dad saying that it was chaos”, Sharapova acknowledges
