Anastasia Myskina: We have many young talented athletes and tennis players who need support from media and sponsors. For example, there`s US Open and there`s also US Open Junior Championship — and just yesterday (September 5, 2017 — ed.) our young player won her first round. It`s a great achievement. But, obviously, no one heard about her because we don`t really have any supportive coverage even from online sports media.

But we have hope. We`re thankful to TokenStars agency that reached us, our federation, and we`re now looking forward to our cooperation enabling great opportunities and environment for the future of our athletes.

We`re talking about tennis achievements now. And also commercial contracts that might help their careers — in tennis, players have to be self-sufficient and be able to pay for themselves.

It`s a non-team sport and it`s not like in football or hockey where they`ve got a sponsor that covers everything. From what they earn, tennis players have to spend a lot on trainings, coaches, medical services, PTs.

Tennis is clearly an expensive sport and we need financial support. The transition from junior to professional tennis is a very complex process — first you`re just a young girl or a boy and then suddenly you have to face this huge responsibility.

There are a number of challenges that we face, and we hope that various agencies, including TokenStars, will help us overcome these barriers and let our athletes be the best. It sounds trivial, but that`s what we strive for. In addition to what I was saying before, airfares and tennis academies are always our biggest expenses. And we want our athletes to train in our country, to attract funding to our academies — if it happens, I believe, I won`t be standing here alone.