Representatives of Moscow political elite, show-biz sharks, and entrepreneurs came to Kyiv last Sunday. They came to the tennis tournament entitled Big Hat, a parody on the Big Helmet tournament currently taking place in Wimbledon.
This extraordinary event was organized by the Nauka Co., chaired by Anatoly Krzhevin and the Infosport Corp., chaired by Serhiy Lashkul.
Employees of the Presidential Administration could envy the motorcade which took Russians from Boryspil airport to hotels. Well-know politician and people’s deputy of Russian State Duma Gennady Burbulis, the president of tennis federation of Russia Shamil Tarpishchev, movie producer and Kinotavr president Mark Rudinstein, composer Maksim Dunaevsky, and former press secretary of Boris Yeltsin Sergey Medvedev. The Ukrainian side did not have such resonant names on its list of players. Serhiy Tyhypko was out of town, and Minister of Internal Affairs Yuri Kravchenko did not show up. But former aide of the first Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk Valery Matvienko fought like a lion. Ukrainian tennis players went out to the tournament led by People’s Deputy Volodymyr Semynozhenko and Ukrainian Tennis Association President Herman Beniamynov.
In the semi-finals the Russian pair of Dunaevsky and Rudinstein lost to Petro Kudyma, the president of the Antey-Sport group and Yevhen Kalhanov, director of the Kyiv city administration tennis complex. In the finals Ukrainian players faced former Russian Deputy Premier, Minister of Labor, deputy chairman of the Savings Bank of Russia Arkadiy Melikian and businessman Igor Nagoriansky. The Ukrainians turned out to have no sense of hospitality and won the Big Hat tournament.
Photo by Pavlo Pashchenko, special forThe Day:
Gennady Burbulis
Maksim Dunaevsky (left) and Volodymyr Semynozhenko








