Emotional return home for Sharapova

Gomel, Belarus: You would think that Maria Sharapova's trek through the irradiated wilderness of eastern Belarus should end, definitively, her portrayal as the selfish little rich girl.

But for the young woman who has established herself as the highest-paid female athlete on the planet, some trappings of extravagance must endure even in the most blasted landscapes.

The scene is a remote regional airfield outside Gomel. Its terminal building is a stark Soviet monolith and it is scattered with rusting Tupolevs you would only dare to board after several vodkas. But this is far from an average day, as a vision in the flawless midday sky soon shows.

For coming in to land is one gleaming and highly incongruous private jet, bearing the self-styled princess that is Sharapova.

The 23 year-old, wearing a simple grey dress, emerges from the aircraft to be garlanded with bouquets by fawning local dignitaries.

My own journey involved a stopover in Vienna and a profoundly unpleasant, three-hour interrogation by consular officials at Minsk airport.

But then, Belarus is run by a repressive autocrat, Alexander Lukashenko, and announcing myself in the dead of night as a visa-less English journalist does not open quite as many doors as if I were a blonde, beautiful Russian tennis player.

Still, after a £300 (Dh1,710) payment and many rather undignified pleas for clemency, I am here in the country's heartland to watch Sharapova come home. Well, not home exactly, but to the Chernobyl fall-out zone; to the place whose grotesque fate she escaped only fractionally. It was during the early hours of April 26, 1986, when newsreels began running with the words: "There has been a nuclear accident in the Soviet Union. There is speculation that people have been injured, and may have died."

Almost a year later, once parents Yuri and Yelena had fled the poisoned streets of Gomel for western Siberia, Maria Yuryevna Sharapova was born. Yuri, who had to take a job on the Siberian oilfields, is accompanying her on this trip, her first to the region for 11 years.

Reconnecting

Since he is a notoriously volatile soul, Sharapova has dispensed with him as a coach, but not as a companion for her return to the land that shaped her future.

"It's very emotional," Yuri admits. "There's a big sense of her reconnecting with her roots, even though she wasn't born here. Back in 1986, it was just crazy. People panicked, packed up their bags and if they had chance, tried to escape."

He was one of them, terrified by the radiation cloud gathering over Gomel and the growing incidence of neighbours falling sick. Yelena, too, who became pregnant with Maria four months after the catastrophe, has talked of the birth defects she feared would arise.

At several points during this visit Yuri, who having transplanted Sharapova to Florida aged six, spends private time with his daughter, whether walking through sun-dappled forests to share his memories or taking her to the municipal hospital to see her grandmother, Galina.

Sharapova grasps the pain of her family history and has read, voraciously, about the impact of the Chernobyl catastrophe.

She is keenly aware that 9,000 people around Gomel will die prematurely because of their exposure to radioactive dust and has not hesitated in her work as an ambassador to the region, on behalf of the United Nations Development Project.

"My dad's family still lives here, so there are a lot of people I'm coming back to," she says.

"Too many people have forgotten about Chernobyl, but I'm determined to remember. I'm trying to help the kids who have been born since, to find a way of their own, to give them perspective."

Sharapova named highest-paid female athlete

Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova was named the world's highest-paid female athlete by Forbes magazine.

Sharapova pulled in $24.5 million over the past year, including $1 million earned from prize money and the rest derived from endorsements and appearance fees, Forbes said.

Sharapova, 23, became an overnight tennis sensation at the age of 17 when she won Wimbledon in 2004, and quickly showed her business acumen by signing lucrative contracts with global brands like Canon, Motorola, Tiffany, Land Rover, and Colgate-Palmolive. But her biggest deal is with Nike, which re-signed the Russian star in January to an eight-year contract worth up to $70 million.