Russia Crushed in Fed Cup Quarterfinals
The Moscow Times reports that Belgium has easily dispatched Russia in the quarter finals of the Fed Cup:
LIEGE, Belgium -- French Open champion Justine Henin-Hardenne won her second Fed Cup match in as many days Sunday, beating Yelena Dementyeva 6-2, 6-0 to give Belgium an insurmountable 3-1 lead over double defending champion Russia.
The victory moved Belgium into the semifinals in July, when it will host the United States. The Americans beat Germany on Sunday.
Earlier in the day, U.S. Open Champion Kim Clijsters swept past Maria Kirilenko 6-1, 6-4 to move Belgium in front for the first time. Henin-Hardenne, ranked fourth in the world, showed her love of playing on clay and never gave Dementyeva a hope with a performance that delighted the sellout crowd of 5,000 at the Country Hall.
Despite the concluding doubles having no impact on the final result, Henin-Hardenne and Clijsters would still play the match together to prove there was no bad blood between them.
"It was great with the whole team together. There is a great atmosphere," said Henin-Hardenne.
Dementyeva dominated Clijsters on Saturday with a straight-sets win, giving the Russians hope of staying on track for a Fed Cup triple.
But Henin-Hardenne outlasted world No. 5 Nadia Petrova 6-7 (2), 6-4, 6-3 Saturday to put Belgium back in the tie and then overwhelmed Fed Cup specialist Dementyeva in just over an hour with a flurry of winners.
Tiny Belgium has now crushed Russia three times in a row in their Fed Cup meetings. Here endeth the supposed coming "dominance" of Russian women in tennis, rumors of which started in Russophile ears in 2004 when Russians won three of four slams. It's been straight down hill since then, as with most things sporty where Russia is concerned (see below La Russophobe notes that Russia was a total disaster at the Calgary World Figure Skating event earlier this year).
4 comments:
DAUT: Let me explain it to you.
Russia is a country totally without real success. It exists on the basis of lies and illusions, just like the USSR did. The USSR collapsed and disappeared because it could not accept truth and seek real accompolishments, and so will Russia.
Russian tennis is exactly the same. Just as Russia has the accident of oil to make people forget about the fact that its population gets smaller every year, Maria Sharapova has T&A. But if you look below the surface, Maria is not a true champion, and she is spending her time not on becoming one but on cheesecake shots in sports illustrated. She has a boring, one-dimensional games and she regularly gets whipped by the top non-Russian players. At the Nasdaq, her semi-final match was half empty. Women's tennis can't be great when the main focus is appearance rather than tennis. Real sports fans don't care about that.
And in the real world, having a few pennies worth of oil per capita means nothing when your country is governed by a proud KGB spy, sings the Stalin anthem, abolishes election of governors and fights a bloody war in Chechnya rather than allowing Chechens to be free.
So both Russia and Sharapova are doomed to be consigned to the dustbin of history, and they show no signs of caring, as long as they can gorge themselves on oil and cheesecake.
See?
You are strange girl and I wonder why do you hate Russia so much...
Mikhail:
You are a normal Russian. Why do you hate facts so much? Why do Russians always try to kill people who criticize them, or throw them out of the country? Why did you expel Solzhenitisin? Why can't you admit your faults and work to improve? Why do you see those who try to improve you as haters, and those to keep you in failure as lovers? Can't you see this attitude is destroying Russia, which is literally disappearing from the face of the earth?
Mikhail:
Did you ever ask yourself why Kazakhstan hates Russia?
http://russophobe.blogspot.com/2006/04/russia-alienates-yet-another-neighbor.html
Did you ever ask yourself why you think simply reporting on Russia's loss in the Fed Cub constitutes "hatred"? Did you ever think that maybe fear of criticism means inability to change and grow, and that means doom?
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