News of the World Scandal

The Sharapovas decided to go to Florida and try to get Maria enrolled there. But only Yuri could get a visa (a document permitting a foreign citizen to legally enter the country) to travel to the United States, and so Yelena stayed behind in Sochi and waited for her visa application to be approved. They also needed money for the trip and had to borrow several hundred dollars from Yuri and Yelena's parents. This was an enormous sum for her parents, partly because Russia was in a state of financial chaos at the time, and average working families like hers struggled to obtain the basic necessities of life in the new, non-Communist era in which the state did not generously provide jobs, housing, and healthcare for all citizens. "My parents weren't stupid," Sharapova told Peter Kafka in Forbes. "The conditions in Russia weren't the best for tennis."