Is Maria Sharapova Russian or American?

Maria Sharapova carries the Russian flag at the Olympics

Is Maria Sharapova American, because she lives in Florida, having learnt tennis at Nick Bolletteri's academy? Or is she Russian, because she feels Russian and is proud of being Russian?

This question has generated a bit of a storm in a tea cup. Maria Sharapova had the honour of carrying the Russian flag in the Olympics, and was obviously thrilled about it. However, Tennis magazine journalist Peter Bodo was very upset about this and went on this rant:

"I get tired of hearing Sharapova, who lives in Bradenton, Fla., go on about how thrilled she is to represent her native Russia... I find Sharapova's attitude ungracious, and mind-numbingly so...

Maria seem more like a deluded character out of a Tennessee Williams play than a formidable "brand" and money-making machine. That's just plain weird; too weird to be true. I guess the money, creature comforts, and other attractions of the U.S. are more appealing than a life spent drinking in the piney mountain air of the Urals, or bobbing around in a boat in the headwaters of the mighty Don—great as it is to represent Russia in the Olympics!"

This is not just bad-spirited, it is outright stupid. It took me less than ten seconds to find out that the distance from Maria's home town, Nyagan, to the source of the River Don, in Novomoskovsk, is 1760 miles or two and a half days of driving time. Did John McEnroe, America's proudest Davis Cupper, ever go bobbing around in a boat in the headwaters of the mighty Mississippi? It is easy to dismiss Peter Bodo as a shrivelled-up, narrow-minded American git, but personally, I find his narrow-mindedness even sadder than that: Bodo himself was born in Austria and has spent pretty much his entire life reporting on a genuinely global sport.

Bodo's bile predictably generated a ton of negative reaction. Since then, Tennis magazine have tried to row back, with their more thoughtful columnist Steve Tignor writing that "I can’t begrudge her a desire to feel a link to her family and its history". But, like another American called Mitt Romney found out last week, what has been said can't be unsaid.

I myself am proud to have serially failed the Tebbit test, like every other expat I've met in Britain, and like every Englishman or Scot I've known who has lived abroad. That puts me squarely and naturally on Maria's side of this question. So I'll be hoping even more fervently than usual that Maria beats Serena Williams to win the Olympic gold for Russia. It's a long shot - the bookies at offering 4:1 on a Maria win - but she's still got a shot.