A tennis star from Russia was divorced in the USA. Everyone saw the scandalous naked photos

Anastasia Myskina is known to Russian tennis fans primarily as the winner of Roland Garros in 2004, when she beat compatriot Elena Dementieva in the final. But there were other high-profile events in Myskina’s life – not always, alas, with a positive connotation.

One day, explicit photographs of the athlete ended up in the press against her will.

Model on horse

In 2002, Myskina did not yet have great achievements at Grand Slam tournaments, but was already in the top part of the WTA rankings. Not only sports publications, but also fashion magazines became interested in the bright tennis player from Russia. The American edition of GQ even decided to organize a special photo shoot for Anastasia.

Among the many photographs taken by photographer Mark Seliger, there were those in which Myskina appeared naked in very revealing poses. The most original was the photograph in which the athlete sits on a horse in a forest scenery, completely naked, like the heroine of one of Edouard Manet’s paintings.

Two years later, the Russian magazine “Bear” published photographs of Myskina, which it officially acquired from GQ. This is where the scandal broke out. Anastasia was extremely outraged that her photographs became public knowledge.

Did she really not understand what she was getting into?

8 million per publication

As it turned out, Myskina did not give any permission to publish the photographs, much less distribute them. Back in 2002, she told the photographer that he could keep the pictures for his collection, but nothing more. However, even then, a naked photo of Anastasia appeared in the Russian-language edition of GQ, and then in that same “Bear” – a magazine for adult men. Upon learning of that same photo shoot, Myskina immediately filed a lawsuit.

The tennis player claimed that at that time she spoke little English, and GQ took advantage of this when signing a contract with her. Anastasia demanded $8 million in compensation because the publication of the photos caused her “great emotional suffering” and “damaged her reputation.”

Anastasia Myskina / Photo: © RIA Novosti / Ekaterina Chesnokova

The publishers, in turn, made excuses. The editor-in-chief of Russian GQ Nikolai Uskov noted that there is inconsistency in Myskina’s actions, because she knew about the publications two years ago.

– Then [в 2002 году] we also published one of the pictures from this series – naked Myskina on a horse. But no lawsuits followed. True, we recently photographed the tennis player again for the Olympic issue of the magazine, and she complained that she was dissatisfied with that publication. She said that because of the photograph she could not show the magazine to her mother,” Uskov told Gazeta.

Medved was also surprised by the lawsuit. Publisher Igor Svinarenko said that there is nothing so revealing in the photographs at all, and they “can be shown to children.” The court ultimately sided with the journalists. Even the fact that Myskina signed a document in which she did not understand anything did not influence the decision. The tennis player herself said that because of the pictures she even had friction with her boyfriend.

“He says: whoever likes it, communicate with him.” So we are strict with this,” the athlete shared with Komsomolskaya Pravda.

The scandal broke just a few months after Myskina won her first and last Grand Slam tournament, Roland-Garros 2004. Alas, after this the athlete no longer achieved such success.