Biography
An athlete, smart, beautiful, maybe not a Komsomol member. Maria Kirilenko is undoubtedly a recognized professional of Russian and world tennis, like her eminent colleagues Elena Vesnina, Maria Sharapova, Elena Dementieva. The girl’s biography serves as an illustration of prioritization on the court and at the end of her career.
Childhood and youth
Masha Kirilenko grew up in the Moscow region, where she was born in January 1987. Mom Olga advocated for an active life for the child, since the girl was plump. At first, Masha was enrolled in ballet, but when the ballet school closed, she was taken to dance.
Maria Kirilenko
And Maria liked it there; she and her partner won prizes, but the student could not boast of being diligent. Dad Yuri, who himself played tennis well, took his daughter to the court, since the sports school was located next to the house. The coach noticed that the girl was promising and talented, which is where her hypermobility was put to use.
Seven-year-old Maria was sent to the Dynamo specialized school. Mom left work to take her daughter to the capital; later, when the opportunity arose, her father helped. My father was always present, accompanied me on trips, and became a member of the team.
Maria Kirilenko in childhood
When the talented girl turned 13, she was taken under the wing of an international master of sports, the famous Soviet tennis player and coach Elena Bryukhovets. They came up with a set of training sessions especially for Maria, thanks to which Kirilenko became the leader in her age group and second in the youth team.
Under the leadership of Bryukhovets, the girl won the junior American Open and won the first WTA tournament in her sports life.
Early years, childhood and family of Maria Kirilenko
The future famous tennis player was born on January 25, 1987 in Moscow.
Her father loved tennis very much, and therefore began playing sports with his daughter at the age of five. However, at first this sport was not taken very seriously. Masha and her father played only for their own pleasure. The main hobby in the life of the young beauty was dancing. In this context, it is worth noting that as a child, our today’s heroine was a rather restless child, and therefore during dance classes she constantly rushed from one corner to another. The dances she performed resembled a kind of Brownian movement. For this reason, Maria did not achieve great success in this field.
Tennis player Maria Kirilenko is known not only for her sporting achievements
Perhaps it was at this moment that a professional tennis player began to awaken in the soul of Masha Kirilenko. Seeing that dancing was, to put it mildly, “not her thing,” the father took his daughter from the dance group and took her to the tennis section, which worked at the sports hall. And a year later, our today’s heroine achieved her first successes. She began to defeat her rivals one after another, and a year later she even managed to become the best tennis player of the former USSR in her age group.
It is very interesting that her impressive success in tennis did not at all prevent the girl from doing well at school. According to Masha herself, at that time her daily routine was scheduled literally minute by minute. In the morning she went to school in the town of Yubileiny near Moscow, and after classes she went with her father to the sports school. Sometimes we had to sleep and have lunch right in the car.
However, the abundance of difficulties only strengthened the character of our today's heroine. She began to study with redoubled zeal, and therefore by the age of ten she began to stand out noticeably from other children. At the age of 12, she was noticed by the famous teacher Elena Bryukhovets. It was she who soon became the personal trainer of Maria Kirilenko. A special training program was developed especially for her. Maria was also helped in organizing the sports process by such famous athletes of Russia and Belarus as Yevgeny Kafelnikov, Maxim Mirny and Andrei Olkhovsky.
Maria Kirilenko about her wedding with Ovechkin and friendship with Sharapova The support of such brilliant masters allowed the young athlete to very soon achieve impressive progress on the court. In 2002, she won her first US Open (in the junior group), and after that she began collecting trophies one after another.
Sport
Maria Kirilenko has always had a clear example and support from people who know the “kitchen” of tennis well - Yevgeny Kafelnikov and Andrei Olkhovsky. The young tennis player's first serious successes were victories in the Canadian Open and US Open. Masha was 15 years old, two wins in a row in competitions of this level allowed the athlete to rise to second place in the ranking of juniors under 18 years old
Tennis player Maria Kirilenko
Maria’s debut at adult competitions under the flag of the Women’s Tennis Association was the 2002 tournament held on the island of Bali. Then - participation in the Japanese Open and the championship in Pattaya.
At the beginning of 2003, the Russian woman received the title at the American stage of the International Tennis Federation cycle. In the summer of the same year, Kirilenko participated for the first time in adult Grand Slam competitions - the US Open, and lost only to the Frenchwoman Amelie Mauresmo, at that time the 6th racket in the world. A year later, Maria rightfully took a place in the leading hundred of the world table of ranks.
Maria Kirilenko on the court
In 2004, the athlete was seeded at the Birmingham Classic, the French Open, and Wimbledon in England. In 2005, the open championships of the Australian continent and Qatar followed. Masha walked away victorious from the Indian Wells Masters and, with Ana Isabel Garigues, made it to the final match of the Internazionali BNL d'Italia. At the Chinese Open Championship, Kirilenko defeated her namesake Maria Sharapova and received her first WTA title. At the end of the 2005 season, Maria rose to 25th place in the ranking.
The track record of the slender beauty, 174 cm tall and weighing 61 kg, includes victories at the Sunfeast Open tournament in India and the Al Habtoor Tennis Challenge in Dubai in 2007. Then - a double triumph (personal and together with Flavia Pennetta) in the women's tournament of the Estoril Open Championship and a similar one in Barcelona.
Maria Kirilenko
The athlete was close to a personal triumph on clay in Cincinnati in 2008, but luck smiled only in the doubles draw. At the end of 2008, Kirilenko won the Seoul KDB Korea Open. Then, over the course of three years, Maria Kirilenko won on the hard court of the Kremlin Cup together with Nadezhda Petrova, reached the 1/4 finals of the Grand Slam in singles for the first time at the Australian Open 2010, and lost only to the leader Serena Williams at the Premier 5 series tournament.
At the Australian Open in 2011, Maria reached the women's final paired with Victoria Azarenka and 1/2 - mixed with her Serbian colleague Nenad Zimonjic. On the French courts, the tennis player made it to the quarterfinals of the doubles, and in the same tournament in the USA she lost to the final winner Samantha Stosur.
In the period 2012-2014, the tennis player won the main prize of the Miami Masters mixed doubles, reached the similar final of Roland Garros, and played in the quarterfinals for the first time on the Wimbledon court. Maria brought home a bronze medal from the London Olympics, won together with Nadezhda Petrova. Still with the same Petrova, she was lucky at the end of the WTA tour.
During her tennis career, Maria was able to rise to 10th position in the world singles ranking and 5th in doubles, win 6 individual titles at WTA tournaments and 12 in pairs.
Maria Kirilenko is one of the main tennis beauties of the 2000s. What is she doing now?
Russian Maria Kirilenko
Until recently, she delighted tennis fans with her results on the court and natural beauty. The 33-year-old mother of two children still looks great.
Success on the court came to Maria as a junior. She won the 2002 US Open among girls under 18, when she was only 15. In general, that season was very successful for Russian juniors. Maria Sharapova reached the final
, and the Wimbledon final was entirely Russian.
Then Vera Dushevina
took the title from Sharapova.
Test. Can you recognize tennis players from childhood photographs?
Guess the famous tennis players and cheer yourself up.
It is interesting that Maria Kirilenko is one of the few tennis players with whom Sharapova was friends on tour. I've been friends since junior tennis. And then they successfully teamed up and won the title in Birmingham 2004. Moreover, Sharapova then won the singles, and then took Wimbledon.
Photo: Getty Images
The paths of the two Marias miraculously crossed at the 2012 Olympics in London, where both played more than successfully. Sharapova reached the singles final, defeating Kirilenko in the semifinals, and eventually won the silver medal. Maria Kirilenko herself knocked out her formidable rival, Petra Kvitova,
, and in the match for third place she lost to Belarusian
Victoria Azarenka
.
But in doubles with Nadezhda Petrova,
Maria Kirilenko was still able to win the bronze medal at the Olympics.
Photo: Getty Images
In total, during her career, Kirilenko won 6 singles titles, made it to the top 10 (in June 2013), played in the quarterfinals of Grand Slam tournaments three times (Australian Open-2010, Wimbledon-2012, Roland Garros-2013), She played for the Russian national team in the Fed Cup for three seasons and helped them reach the finals twice (2011 and 2013). In doubles, Maria was the 5th racket in the world, played twice in the finals of Grand Slam tournaments (Australian Open-2011 paired with Azarenka and Roland Garros-2012 with Petrova), became the winner of the WTA Final Championship-2012 with the same Petrova, and won 12 doubles titles in total.
Photo: Getty Images
Maria Kirilenko had a whole army of fans. Tennis fans often included her in various dozens of the most beautiful and sexy tennis players. The Russian woman was also included in the lists of the best athletes in the world according to famous fashion magazines, as well as on the covers of glossy publications.
Among Maria's shoots in various magazines, perhaps the most famous is her photo shoot for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition in 2009. There she starred with Daniela Hantuchova
and
Tatyana Golovin
, and this shooting was called “Valley of the Dolls.”
In 2006, Maria Kirilenko became the face of a special Adidas clothing line from fashion designer Stella McCartney
- daughter of one of the Beatles, Sir
Paul McCartney
. Elegant tennis dresses and light sneakers looked like a real model on the Russian woman.
Maria Kirilenko dated for some time with the famous Russian tennis player Igor Andreev
. Interestingly, the young people played mixed doubles very successfully. At Wimbledon 2008 they reached the semi-finals.
And then Maria had a serious relationship with the famous hockey player Alexander Ovechkin
. The whole world watched their whirlwind romance. The Great Eight, one of the best athletes in the world, took patronage over the tennis player and after winning the World Hockey Championship in Sweden and Finland during the summer holidays in the NHL, he traveled with Kirilenko to a whole series of tournaments, simultaneously acting as a motivator, physical training coach and chief cheerleader Maria Kirilenko. Alexander was on the team of the Russian tennis player at the tournament in Strasbourg, then at Roland Garros, then traveled through the entire grass season - 's-Hertogenbosch and Wimbledon - and finally ended up at the Olympics in London, where Maria, with his support, achieved one of the main successes in her career.
Photo: from the personal archive of Maria Kirilenko
Alexander and Maria announced their engagement on December 31 of the same year. The lockout in the NHL then continued, and Ovechkin played for Dynamo Moscow for half a season. Everyone was waiting for the wedding, but it never took place.
Photo: Alexander Safonov, “Championship”
In the summer of 2014, Kirilenko made an official announcement about the termination of her engagement to hockey player Alexander Ovechkin
: “I have decided to terminate the engagement. There are many reasons, but I would not like to go into details. I’ll say one thing: our relationship is over, but I respect Sasha as a person and an athlete and sincerely wish him further success in sports.”
Photo: Alexander Safonov, “Championship”
Well, in January 2015, shocking news broke: Maria Kirilenko married government official Alexei Stepanov
. He then held the position of head of the State Services Committee of the city of Moscow, from which he left shortly after the wedding. From 2020 to 2018, Stepanov was the vice-rector of Moscow State University for administrative policy and informatization, and after that, according to rumors, he left for a promotion. This is how Ovechkin’s would-be bride made a sharp turn in her destiny.
Photo: from the personal archive of Maria Kirilenko
In the summer of the same year, Maria gave birth to a son, and in September 2017, a daughter. “When children appear, it becomes difficult to plan your day and further vacations. I love a relaxing holiday; I’ve had enough adrenaline in my life,” Kirilenko said.
Now Maria Kirilenko has her own children's tennis school. And in April 2020, she joined the coaching staff of the Russian national team in the Fed Cup, whose captain is Igor Andreev
.
Personal life
In Maria’s personal life, everything is fine - she is a happy wife, raising her son Mikhail. In September 2017, there was a replenishment - a girl was born. Husband Alexey Stepanov is a candidate of economic sciences, worked in the Moscow government, headed the public services committee, and went into business in 2015.
Wedding of Maria Kirilenko and Alexey Stepanov
Back in 2014, Maria took a break due to injuries, and after the wedding she announced that she did not plan to return to the court, as she wanted to devote time to her family. By the way, Kirilenko’s wedding turned out to be a surprise for many, since Maria had been in a relationship with NHL star Alexander Ovechkin for 3 years.
Maria Kirilenko and Alexander Ovechkin
The breakup apparently turned out to be painful, since the hockey player did not attend the wedding and sharply declared on his Instagram that there was nothing to do there.
Briefly about the chosen one Maria Kirilenko
The Russian tennis player met with the famous hockey player Alexander Ovechkin in 2012.
For Kirilenko, this period became very successful both in his career and in his personal life. Alexander is two years older than Maria. For a long time he played for Dynamo Moscow in the Super League. Ovechkin then became a left winger for the NHL club Washington, with whom he signed a 13-year contract in 2008.
And the guy first appeared on the ice at the age of 17, playing for the Russian national hockey team, being the youngest player. Ovechkin participated in the three-star match three times. Received four individual awards: Art Ross Trophy, Maurice Richard Trophy, Hart Trophy and Lester Pearson Award.
During the 2008-2009 season, the Russian hockey player scored more than 50 goals and overcame the 100-point mark.
On January 5, 2010, Alexander Ovechkin became the captain of Washington. Agree, a worthy match for a beautiful tennis player!
Maria Kirilenko now
Maria opened a children's tennis school in the village of Zhukovka, on the basis of the Pride Wellness Club. Children of celebrities, Sasha Plushenko and Bogdan Samedov, also attend classes with Kirilenko.
Maria Kirilenko in 2020
Maria personally conducts qualifying classes and training sessions and shares photos and videos on her Instagram page.
Daughter and wife of a basketball player
On September 26, 1979, a daughter appeared in the family of world basketball champion Andrei Lopatov, who was named Maria . Although the girl had been around athletes since childhood, she did not want to connect her future with sports. Maria graduated from the Institute of Foreign Languages, and then went to London and became a master in video directing.
The girl planned to become a singer and took confident steps in this direction. Andrei Grigoriev-Apollonov helped her in this. Maria met the guy even before the start of his brilliant career in the Ivanushki International group. When the group became famous, the girl accompanied her lover on tour. Andrey helped his beloved record songs and shoot videos. The singer personally starred in one of them.
The relationship between Masha Lopatova and Andrei Grigoriev-Apollonov lasted for three years.
During this time they had to go through a lot, including the loss of a child. The girl did not like to remember this and talked about it only in rare interviews. Maria remembers that she almost died. The miscarriage seriously affected her health and there was a possibility that the girl would no longer be able to have children. She said that after this loss, she and Andrei seemed to move away from each other.
When Maria was still with Andrei Grigoriev-Apollonov, she met basketball player Kirilenko. Feelings flared up between them, which grew into a strong family.
Awards and achievements
- 2004 – winner of the Open Saint-Gaudens Midi Pyrénées tournament
- 2005 – winner of the Chinese Open
- 2008 – semi-finalist of the Wimbledon tournament (mixed doubles)
- 2011 – fifth place in the WTA rankings (doubles)
- 2011 – finalist of the Australian Open, semi-finalist of the US Open
- 2012 – medal of the Order “For Merit to the Fatherland”, II degree
- 2012 – Honored Master of Sports of Russia
- 2012 – bronze medal at the London Olympics in doubles
- 2011,2013 – finalist of the Federation Cup
- 2013 – tenth place in the WTA rankings
Sports success
Maria made her debut in adult competitions in 2002 at a tournament held in Bali. Then her career developed rapidly: in 2003 she qualified for the US Open (Grand Slam) tournament and reached the third round there. And already in 2004, she reached the final of the WTA tournament in Hyderabad for the first time, but lost in the fight for victory. And in the same year, victory came in doubles - together with their peer, already very successful Maria Sharapova, they won the tournament in Birmingham.
In 2005, his first personal success came - victory at the WTA China Open tournament. In total, Maria won six WTA singles titles during her career:
- 2005 - China Open;
- 2007 - Sunfeast Open;
- 2008 - Estoril Open, Korean Open and Barcelona Tournament;
- 2013 - Pattaya Open Championship.
In addition, Maria participated in the finals of WTA tournaments six times and was defeated, thus taking 2nd place in the tournament.
But Masha achieved the greatest number of titles in doubles. It was as a pair that she twice played in the finals of Grand Slam tournaments: in 2011 at the Australian Open paired with Azarenka, and in 2012 at Roland Garros with Nadezhda Petrova. Both times the athletes lost the final.
