Cinderella on the Centre Court
Media Images of the Russian Tennis Miracle
Deutsche Fassung
Abstract
Russia has been a great power in tennis for a decade. Women in particular have at times dominated international developments on grass and clay. The Western press has tried to make sense of this success story and told a Cinderella story: poor Russian women had managed to climb to tennis stardom in America. It soon became clear, however, that many of the new professionals came from tennis families and had been encouraged by their parents to undergo hard training from early childhood on.
(Osteuropa 9/2013, pp. 99–127)