Two-type Olympic bars champion Svetlana Khorkina and Olympic rhythmic gymnastics champion Alina Kabayeva have traded acrobatics for politics, The Times of London reported today.
VLADIMIR PUTIN has resorted to an age-old trick to capture the voters’ imagination: sexing up the Duma, the lower house of the Russian parliament, with an array of glamorous new female recruits.
Ahead of this month’s rigged parliamentary elections, Putin was reported to have complained that there were not enough beautiful women in his United Russia party. The error was soon corrected with a platform of stunning ladies, including four former athletes who have starred in topless photoshoots and Svetlana Zakharova, the elegant principal ballerina of the Bolshoi.
Those four include both Khorkina, now 28, who posed for Russian Playboy after winning the world all-around title in 1997, and Kabayeva, 24, who apparently appeared somewhere “seminaked in a fur rug.”
Even among a bevy of sexy women, Khorkina gets top-dog status.
Top debutante among the new Duma intake (already being described as “Putin’s babes”) is Svetlana Khorkina, 28, a leggy blonde who was a seven-time Olympic medal-winning gymnast. She caused a scandal when she appeared nude in Playboy magazine with her unashamed “If you’ve got it, flaunt it” approach.
“I changed people’s attitudes,” she said. “It’s very good to be sexy.”
Some things never change.
The influx of athletes to provide a little star power in politics is not a new concept. How many professional football players have been elected to the U.S. House or Senate during the past 30 years?
Even Nadia Comaneci was reported to have been offered a position in the Romanian parliament earlier this year. Guess she chose to do Celebrity Apprentice instead.
December 30, 2007 at 5:56 am |
[...] Khorkina the politician « The Gymblog [...]
April 15, 2008 at 2:14 am |
[...] Khorkina (and several other famous attractive young Russian women) made headlines when they joined the Duma, the lower house of Russian Parliament, several months ago. The Times of London called it “an [...]