PARIS/STARNBERG, August 1, 2024
Anna Karolina Schmiedlova recorded another upset victory to reach the women’s singles semifinals of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games, beating Barbora Krejcikova in straight sets to advance to a clash with Donna Vekic, who overcame Marta Kostyuk in a three-hour epic.
“I still can’t believe that I’m in the semi-finals,” said Schmiedlova. “The top four players of the world. The best game of my life is [at] the Olympics, for my country and for the people around me. It’s a big deal. It’s amazing for me. In my country we don’t have so many athletes. Also in tennis it’s rare to be in the semi-finals at the Olympics. I feel like people at home are following it more than normal tournaments. I’ve never had so many messages and so much support. It’s great for me.”
Iga Swiatek and Zheng Qinwen will contest the other semifinal after wins for both players on Wednesday, while Novak Djokovic, Carlos Alcaraz and Alexander Zverev all progressed to the men’s singles quarterfinals. But it was the final outing of the week for Rafael Nadal who, alongside Alcaraz, fell to USA’s Austin Krajicek/Rajeev Ram in the men’s doubles quarterfinals.
“I don’t think it gets any better than that really, to play Rafa here at Roland Garros,” said Krajicek. “He’s the best ever, obviously his results speak for themselves. It was a surreal feeling to be out there battling with him. We don’t get to play in stadiums that full all the time so it was really a pretty cool experience, and probably one of my best ones. It was really cool to stick together, play a great doubles match and get the win and keep moving on here.”
Ram added: “[Nadal] is probably the best athlete here in the history of sport, not just tennis, to win as much as he has here. I think we were confident in the fact that if we stuck together, we did what we can do with us and our team… Having two guys like Bob and Mike Bryan behind us, who are the greatest of all time in doubles, I think helps us a lot. I think we were pretty confident in the package we were going to bring to the court and I thought we executed great.”
Paris 2024 Olympics Results Day 5
