“We were supposed to see each other like three days after the crash,” said Sharapova, who explained that Bryant had been an “incredible sounding board” throughout her career. If not for the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, she would surely not be a tennis star. Her parents, Yuri and Yelena, were living in Gomel in present-day Belarus in April 1986 when the reactor exploded in nearby Chernobyl. Sharapova was born there in April 1987, but Yuri soon moved the family to sunnier Sochi on the Black Sea, where he discovered tennis and passed it on to his only child. In 1993, when Maria was 6 and post-Soviet Russia was in turmoil, she and her father moved to Florida with less than $1,000 in Yuri’s pocket.

Source: New York Times February 26, 2020 13:00 UTC