Marat Safin kick starts his political career

Mercurial and super charismatic Russian mega-star, Marat Safin has been elected to the Russian Federal Parliament, the Duma. The 31 yr old former 2 time Grand Slam winner, and currently on the ATP Champions Tour is a member of Vladimir Putin’s “United Russia” party. He has been elected into the Duma’s lower house as a representative for the Nyzhny Novgorod region, approximately 500 kms from Moscow. This is what Safin had to say

“My life has been changing for the last two years, All of a sudden I found myself in a situation where I had to make really serious decisions. It started with one small thing and it grew up to something big. I could go and make commercials left and right and pretend like I am a celebrity, but that is not me. I never did this, I never liked it. I had a few months of thinking ‘should I do this or should I not’ but now I am pretty sure of what I’m doing and I want to do it. I’m in completely new shoes, This is a completely new life, a new way of thinking, new way of doing things that’s nothing to do with tennis or sports at all. But the two things definitely have one thing in common and that is that you need to have a character. You have to be strong and you have to know where you’re going, what you want to do, and you have to be able to make sacrifices. I will be working for the next five years day after day, sitting in an office, wearing a suit. I will have good days, bad days and I will have to fight once again like I’ve been fighting on the court. It will be complicated.”

Backing from one champion to the other

This move comes as a major surprise from a player who had frequent meltdowns on the tennis court, and had numerous rundowns with the authorities. The image of a politician does not exactly fit with the image of THE Marat Safin. But, this move earned the backing of the legendary Pete Sampras who said so

“In 20 years Marat will be the President of Russia!” (joked Sampras) Trust me, Marat is going to go a long way. He is very intelligent and articulate and he’s good with people, and that’s half the battle with being a politician.”

When Sampras says that Safin is intelligent, articulate and good with people, it definitely sounds weird because what we fans saw on TV suggested the exact opposite. Nevertheless, kudos to Safin for choosing to do something sensible for his nation and country mates and not deciding to go the commercial route.