WASHINGTON, November 13 (RIA Novosti) – Russian tennis star Maria Sharapova will join the US television network NBC as a correspondent for its coverage of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, the Black Sea resort town in southern Russia where she lived as a child, Sharapova and the network said Wednesday.
“It’s meaningful for this year’s Olympic Games to be hosted in my hometown of Sochi,” Sharapova said in a statement to RIA Novosti. “Being a part of the NBC family is exciting as I’ll be able to share with the world the unique culture and history of Sochi.”
It was not immediately clear what events Sharapova will be covering for NBC, which holds the US media rights for the Sochi Olympics next February.
But the executive director of NBC Olympics, Jim Bell, said in a statement that Sharapova “transcends sports as one of the world’s most recognizable stars.”
“Growing up in Sochi until she was six years old and with family and friends still living in the area, Maria will offer a unique and personal perspective on a place she knows so well,” Bell said.
Sharapova, who carried the Russian flag at the opening ceremony of last year’s Summer Olympics in London, said in a statement to the US entertainment website E! News that the Olympic experience “is unlike anything else.”
“As a past Olympian it means even more to me for the Games to be hosted in such a remarkable place,” the website quoted the world’s No. 4 women’s tennis player as saying.
Sharapova is not the first Olympic athlete with Russian roots to be enlisted by NBC for its coverage of the Sochi games, which are slated to open February 7 and wrap up on February 23. In October it announced that Nastia Liukina, a US Olympic gold medal gymnast and the daughter of two former Soviet gymnastics champions, will cover the games for the network.
