Having foiled yet another coup, he can rightfully stand as the matryoshka of fortune. Boris Eltsin loves tennis as much as vodka, and maybe more.
Sitting at the Bercy sports hall in the unusual role of head-supporter, he must have been quite a sight.
The man who rescued democracy in the former Soviet Union had divested himself of the robes of officialdom and was cheering at every point won by his fellow countrymen.
The comparison is fitting, because the occasion (and given his presence it could hardly be otherwise) was an historical one. After being on the verge of elimination, Russia went on to win its first Davis Cup against the French favourites, and on their own court too. If this dream came true, it was thanks to a twenty-year-old who, arriving in France as a reserve player, ended up in the leading role.
Mikhail Youzhny doesn’t have the rank of the more medalled Safin and Kafelnikov. In 1995, when the United States won the Davis Cup final in Moscow, Youzhny was just an eager ball-boy.
The tears, the bitterness and the desire to make right an ongoing black streak in Russian tennis have helped him to fight until victory in the last and decisive match against another promising young man, Paul Henry Matthieu.
And now there is reason to rejoice for a tennis school that over the last two decades has been churning out talented players at an impressive rate. Yet, being Russian and a tennis player must be some sort of oxymoron, an impossible combination, considering that despite athletes such as Chesnokov, Volkov, Cherkasov, Medvedev (who later passed to Belarus) and the above-mentioned Safin and Kafelnikov, the great Russian homeland had never been able to establish itself with some continuity at world levels.
The fact that the biggest victory came from a quasi-rookie, number 30 in world ranking, who had lost all but one of his five Davis Cup matches, might be a lesson for the two more significant players, who appear to have squandered the talents bestowed on them by Mother Nature. “Disgrace”, “dunce”, “the lazy prince” and other lighter sobriquets are an example of the monikers that Safin and Kafelnikov have been awarded from the pundits - meaning that with their potential they should continuously be vying for the top places. The two, instead, are almost always making life difficult for themselves, displaying unfriendly tempers and scarce humility.
The national heroes could and should have been them. But while everyone believed that success could only be delivered by them, along comes Mikhail Youzhny and his day of glory. It hasn’t been easy for him – he lost his father only two months ago, and few people would have bet on him winning. “He doesn’t know himself how he did it,” sentenced Safin after the final match, not without some bitterness.
Although Safin had already given Russia two points, it was Youzhny who put the cherry on the cake. And the name that would go down in Russian sports history was Youzhny’s, the boy who had been snubbed by the two prima donnas.
Envy, jealousy, lack of harmony among the players.
This leads us to another side of the winning team. A side where rivalry prevails on team spirit, where silence shuts out dialogue, and where a decision had to be taken that was not easy for the team captain Tarpischev nor for Kafelnikov, who left his place to Youzhny in the final match. Leaving out the man who had won Olympic gold for Russia at Sydney, and make him understand that this was the best thing to do, was stuff for a “night of the long knives”.
The decision for the talented player from Sochi to stay out was passed off as semi-voluntary, but largely endorsed by teammate Safin without too many qualms.
Shockingly out of shape, which had cost the team two points between the singles and the doubles, Kafelnikov practically handed himself in for replacement, flying off to Siberia with his overgrown ego, in order to spare himself the arguments.

Translated by Interpres sas