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Maria Kirilenko Profile |
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Birth Date: January 25, 1987
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Birth Place: Moscow, Russia
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Birth Name: Maria Yuryevna Kirilenko
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Height: 5'8"
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Biography |
Maria Yuryevna Kirilenko is a Russian professional tennis
player. She won her first WTA Tour title in 2005, beating
Anna-Lena Groenefeld 6-3, 6-4 in the China Open. She is a
good friend of Maria Sharapova. She is affectionately called
Makiri.
Maria Kirilenko won the junior event at the 2002 Canadian
Open, as well as the 2002 US Open junior tournament. In
December 2004 she played in a tennis exhibition in Tampa,
Florida to raise money for the Florida Hurricane Relief
Fund.
At the 2006 Australian Open, she gained media attention for
wearing an Adidas outfit designed by British fashion
designer Stella McCartney and herself.
Maria Kirilenko started showing a passion towards tennis
aged 5, but it was difficult to get the practice in while
she attending school but hours of fierce training started to
pay off as she won several tournaments.
When Kirilenko was twelve years old, an Honored Master of
sports, Elena Brioukhovets, saw her while training. All the
next year Elena watched Maria making progress and then
offered her to work together. A three-year program was made
and a special team was selected. In less than three years
Maria became the number one in her age group and the number
two in the group under eighteen. The well-known
tennis-players Yevgeni Kafelnikov, Andrey Olkhovsky and Max
Mirnyi, who had created an organization supporting young
tennis-players, helped Kirilenko to arrange her
training-process and to attend tournaments.
In 2002 Kirilenko became one of the youngest winners of the
Canadian Open and the US Open Junior Tournaments.
Since September 2002 Kirilenko started participating in WTA
events. She made a lot of progress in WTA events but was
setback by injury in 2004 and dropped down the rankings,
whilst missing out on valuable experience. At the end of
2005 she had climbed right up the rankings and won her first
title in Beijing. She has been recognised as one of the up
and coming players of 2006 and is expected to break into the
top 20. |
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Other
Information |
She is a Russian professional tennis player.
She is good friends with fellow Russian tennis player Maria
Sharapova.
She is also some how related to Maria Sharapova, they got
the same middle name of Yuryevna. |
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