With the new NBA season about to begin, Salt Lake Citys Utah Jazz has officially announced that 23-year-old forward Andrei Kirilenko has signed a new contract. In six years, starting from the 2005-6 season, he will earn $86, 365,000, making him the highest paid sportsman in the history of Russian sport. Kirilenkos average annual salary of $14.33 million is leagues ahead of his American-based countrymen like the hockey players Alexei Yashin ($9 mln. with the New York Islanders), Sergei Fedorov ($8 mln., Anaheim Mighty Ducks), Alex

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ander Mogilny ($5.5 mln., Toronto Maple Leafs) and Sergei Zybov, ($5 mln., Dallas Stars).

Kirilenko started his march to the top with the Frunzenskaya regional team in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). His big break came ten years ago, when Vladimir Kondrashin, the head coach of St. Petersburgs Spartak and the mastermind of the Soviet Unions legendary Olympic triumph in Munich, noticed the young player. He saw a future NBA star in the lanky, long armed teenager, particularly as he showed that he was a fighter, unfazed by the temptations of fame and money.

Kirilenko justified the hopes of the great coach on the court first for Spartak, where he made his debut at the age of 15 in Russias championship, and then at CSKA, which realistically could have won the Euroleague in 2001 if the coach had displayed more faith in the 20-year-old "wonderkid." The Utah Jazz staff was less circumspect and the coaches threw their first Russian on the roster into the fray at the first opportunity.

Now, Kirilenko has signed up to Utah until 2011, when he will turn 30. "I have always said that I want to spend all of my US career with Utah," the Russian said at a press conference after he put pen to paper. "Im happy that we have managed to understand each other." The Utah management has no reason to doubt him, as he has always lived up to his word.

MOSCOW, (RIA Novosti sports commentator Mikhail Smirnov)