Soviet basketball star Ulyana Semyonova said that...

Soviet basketball star Ulyana Semyonova said that she was reduced to playing hungry while under contract to a Spanish team because the Soviet sports authorities were taking almost her entire salary.

“I won’t survive long on oranges, and fresh air does not replace meat--and I can’t buy meat often,” the 7-foot Semyonova said in an interview in the government newspaper Izvestia.

Semyonova agreed to join Tintoretto in Spain last fall, and later found that the club had paid the Soviet Sports Committee $50,000 for her services.

She arrived in Madrid without any money and was reduced to living on the food she had brought from Moscow. When that ran out, she lived for two weeks by sharing the food allowance given by Soviet authorities to the coach who accompanied her--$5 a day.