Rybakina, the Moscow-born Kazakh who has established herself as a revelation and could be the Wimbledon champion

With a striking low profilealmost silent Elena Rybakina clearly surpassed the Romanian Simona Halep in the second semi-final of Wimbledon and this Saturday he will play his first Grand Slam final.

Owner of extreme power on both sides – she has an excellent first serve favored by her height (she is 1.84 meters tall) and both forehand and backhand hits the ball hard – her tennis is suitable for grass, so the Kazakh became the revelation of the picture.

The Argentine public saw her up close when in April 2021, in Cordoba and for the Billie Jean King Cup, María Lourdes Carlé drove her crazy by playing and beating her in three sets, even if she later beat her in two set. Nadia Podoroska. Now, Rybakina has transformed into a different kind of player who moves much better and who obviously the surface of Wimbledon suits him very well.

The point, the same, happens because Rybakina, who represents Kazakhstan having been born in Moscowhe is one step away from becoming champion of a tournament that has unusually denied Russian and Belarusian tennis players to participate as if they were the ones who fired bullets or launched missiles at the Ukrainian people.

Rybakina, like so many other Kazakh players, is the remnant of an old agreement between Russian tennis and that of the former Soviet Republic that also overcomes sport and touches the politics of both countries at the highest levels.

Many say that the luckiest Russians who have played in Kazakhstan pocket up to $ 1 million a year, money that comes out of the pockets of Bulat Utemuratovone of the richest Kazakhs in the world who is the strongman of tennis in his country, has come to occupy a seat in the International Federation and has an oiled connection with his government.

For something, a blow-up of the now former president Nursultán Nazarbáyev dominated the National Tennis Center where Argentina played for the Davis Cup in 2017 from above.

But how did it all start? In October 2007 Shamil Tarpischev, the same who at 74 is still the “owner” of Russian tennis, met Nazarbayev, an amateur tennis player, brought him a gift and got a deal. In exchange for an autographed photo of the Russian Davis Cup champion team against Argentina with Davydenko, Tursunov, Youzhny and Safin, has signed an agreement to help the development of local tennis. So Tarpischev gave the players to develop outside of Russia and Kazakhstan benefited from that.

This Saturday only one of them will go for the title in the most important tournament in the world. The same one that, if Rybakina were still Russian, would have denied her entry.