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OBSCURE SPORTS
Daily Telegraph - June 2006

Arianne Caoili, the Australian chess prodigy who's breaking hearts at this year's Chess Olympiad, has been described as the ``Anna Kournikova of chess''. But she's not the only sex symbol in an obscure sport. This week I present their stories:

*If Hua Zhang, the ``Anna Kournikova of Futsal'', knows she's China's sexiest sportswoman, it doesn't show. The cut of her trademark boilersuit is, as always, devastating, but her serious, occupied air speaks of a woman with higher things on her mind. Perhaps it is the politically-charged final this month between the People's Republic and Taiwan?

“I strive always for the glory of my country,” Zhang tells me through an interpreter. “I owe it to the party and dedicate my inevitable victory to the workers!”

In her modest home in the suburbs of Hangzhou, I meet Zhang's father, Hu, an introspective, melancholy man. Noticeably absent is Zhang's mother. I point to a photograph on the dresser. Hu steps in, smiling nervously, to explain that his wife has gone on holiday and will return “possibly” in a month. From the other side of the room Zhang appears shaken. “I must win,” she says, unprompted, her voice faltering. “I must.”

* The village of Barrelskis, Belarus is a dot on the map. A bleak, cold place, Barrelskis is the hometown of Ionna Evlaslov, a young woman fast gaining a reputation as the “Anna Kournikova of totem tennis”. Her mother, Elena, laughs. ``We always joke Ionna came with a bang!'' she says of her daughter's birth, which happened seconds before the explosion at nearby Chernobyl. As one of the few young women in the village with no superfluous limbs, Ionna is famed for her beauty, but it's clear she wants to be known for more than just her high red blood cell count. Ionna spends almost all her free time, up to 14 hours a day, often in snow, eye-to-eye with her totem tennis pole, a gift from Mormon missionaries. But life's not all work for the striking Ionna. Like any young woman, she dreams of love and marriage.

“I look for husband,” she says, exhaling a thoughtful plume of smoke. “Maybe Dutch man, maybe Finnish, maybe American.” She pauses. “Where from come you? Have X-box?”

* In his native country of Turkey, where he is a superstar, Mehmet Uzuner is the ``Anna Kournikova of Turkish oil wrestling''. And seeing him here, long-limbed, lounging sensually inside his carpeted tent, I can see why. Mehmet seems to have it all: looks, money, serving boys. So, what's troubling him? “These rumours,” he exclaims, “are just sheer jealousy. I'm on 40 goats a year and make almost 80 amphora of olive oil in sponsorship alone.” He points to a poster of himself, elbow deep in another man’s pants and glistening in oil. “That,” he says decisively, “is what it's all about: the wrestling. Everything else is a distraction.” Suddenly invigorated, he rises from his supine position. Here, he says, thrusting a jumbo bottle of baby oil into my hands. “Do my back.”