Valeria Kashina: Hopeful or Hoax?

Clicking around on those zany intertubes today, Racqonteur caught a glimpse of the teeniest little text ad blinking in the corner, encouraging eager investors to "sponsor next Russian tennis star!" Low and behold, the link led to a perplexing greeting card of sorts from one young Valeria Kashina, posing with a mess of gold medals around her neck and generic trophies in each hand. Her clunky site, which cheerily claims that Valeria will become the next breakthrough Russian player, offers little in the way of evidence to support its lofty claims. Seemingly made on a Commodore 64 in a hut in the Ural mountains, Valeria's site lacks even one nod to the larger tennis world, leaving this visitor to wonder if it might be some kind of East Bloc sports scam. It's hard to imagine who would be foolish enough to send "sponsorship" money to this individual of suspect reality, but then again, everybody loves a phenom!