On Saturday, August 3, one of the last medals at the Olympic tennis tournament in Paris, France, was up for grabs. In the women’s singles, China’s number one Zheng Qingwen and Croatia’s Donna Vekic, ranked 21st in the WTA rankings, competed for gold. This match was played as the third match of the tournament on Court Philippe Chatrier.
The path to the title match for both girls was not easy. And if in the first two matches the representative of the Celeste Imperio had no problems, easily eliminating the Italian Sara Errani (6-0, 6-0) and the Dutch Arancha Rus (6-2, 6-4), then the Chinese gave the match of her life. The third round match with the American Emma Navarro lasted 3 hours and 15 minutes and was full of dramatic moments. In the second set, Qinwen regained a match point at 3:5 and a serve for the match at 4:5. After that, Navarro fell apart and offered practically no resistance in the decisive game: Zheng won 6:7 (7:9), 7:6 (7:4), 6:1.
Emma and Zheng had, as it seemed from the outside, a not-so-pleasant exchange during a handshake at the net. At the press conference, Navarro was asked what she said to her opponent. And Emma decided to answer without choosing words.
“I told her that I don’t respect her as an athlete. In my opinion, she is behaving very aggressively. And it is difficult to play with an opponent that you don’t respect. But you have to give her credit: in the end she played good tennis. She played better than me, so you have to congratulate her,” Navarro said.
Qinwen commented on Emma’s comments at her press conference.
“She said she doesn’t know why I have so many fans. She seemed unhappy with my behavior. If she doesn’t like something, she can tell me. And I would like to fix that and become a better player and a better person. I’m glad she told me this. I won’t consider it an attack because she lost,” Qinwen said.
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In the quarter-finals, the Chinese faced three-time TBS champion Angelique Kerber. Once again it was a three-hour battle! Qinwen was able to snatch victory from the 36-year-old German only in the third set tie-break 6:7 (4:7), 6:4, 7:6 (8:6). It should be noted that this match was the last in the career of the legendary German representative.
In the semi-finals, Zheng had to fight with world number one Iga Swiatek. Before the meeting, experts assessed the rivals’ chances at 88 to 12 in favor of the Pole. However, the hopes of the 23-year-old athlete and her fans for gold in Paris were not destined to come true. The Australian Open 2024 finalist played an impressive match, sensationally knocking out the WTA ranking leader 6:2, 7:5. We add that Qinwen defeated Swiatek for the first time in seven matches and became the first Chinese woman to reach the Olympic final in women’s singles. Zheng also defeated the world’s No. 1 player for the first time (there had been five losses before that, all to Swiatek) and a top-10 player for the first time in four matches (the Chinese player lost to Sabalenka in the AO final, Swiatek in the Dubai quarter-finals and Gauff in the Rome quarter-finals).
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What about Donna Vekic? Two and a half months ago, the Croatian arrived in Paris to prepare for the start of the French Open, went out on the courts and realized that she wanted to retire, go home and take a break. Her mentors supported her, but still persuaded her to give it a try. At the clay major she reached the third round and decided that she wanted to keep fighting.
Before the Paris Slam, Vekic even considered retiring because she was tired. In recent years, the athlete has invested considerable effort, but it has not brought the expected results. Donna simply had no energy or motivation left.
A month later, the 28-year-old Osijek native reached the Wimbledon semi-finals. The Croatian took longer to achieve this, 43 TBS before Donna finished in the earlier stages. In that dramatic London semi-final she lost to Yasmin Paolini of Italy, who was having a phenomenal season, 6:2, 4:6, 6:7 (8:10).
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And now Vekic was awaiting the final of the Games on the same courts of Roland Garros, where she seriously considered suspending her professional career. During the 2024 Olympics, Donna beat the Italian Lucia Bronzetti and then knocked out two US Open winners, Bianca Andreescu and Cori Gauff. The quarter-final clash between the world number 21 and Marta Kostyuk could be compared to a real thriller. In a spectacular match, the Croat defeated the Ukrainian in three hours 6:4, 2:6, 7:6 (10:8), overcoming a 2:5 deficit and a match point in the decisive tie-break. And in the semi-finals, Vekic beat the Slovak Anna-Karolina Schmidlova 6:4, 6:0 in 66 minutes. Donna thus became the third tennis player to reach the Olympic final without having previously contested title matches at WTA-1000 tournaments and Majors in her career, after Elena Dementieva (2000) and Monica Puig (2016). The Osijek native also became the first Croatian player in tennis history to compete for a gold or silver medal in singles at the main event of the quadrennial.
The result of the personal matches between the girls is equal: 1-1. Both previous fights took place on hard courts. In the first round of Courmayeur 2021, Vekic won in two sets (7:6 (1), 6:2), and in the “consolation” final phase in Zhuhai last fall, Qinwen was stronger in three sets (6:4, 6:7 (6), 6:4). That match took place in the group stage and Zheng eventually reached the Zhuhai final, which she lost to Beatrice Haddad-Maya.
The beginning of a new head-to-head battle fell to the representative of the Celestial Empire. She immediately took the lead with a score of 3:0, giving herself the necessary preliminary work. Qingwen was a little more accurate on the baseline. The Melbourne Slam finalist played more actively, tried to attack and performed very well at the net. At the same time, there were fights in almost every game! As a result, at the end of the first set she made another break and took the game 6:2 in 48 minutes. Statistics: 12 – 12 in hits and errors for Zheng, 3 – 12 for Donna. It is noteworthy that she missed all three break points in the first set.
Zheng Qingwen
Photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
Qinwen continued to hold her own line at the start of the second game. The Chinese first took her own serve and then someone else’s for 2:0. True, then the seventh racket of the world relaxed a bit and allowed her opponent to come back into the match for 2:2. Then the girls confidently won the games on their service, but with the score 4:3 in Zheng’s favor, Vekic was again in trouble. The representative of the Celeste again triumphed in reception and on the fourth attempt scored the break for 5:3. Qinwen came out to serve to win the match and did it confidently. 6:2, 6:3 – this is the score with which Zheng defeated Donna Vekic. Thus, the 21-year-old Chinese woman gave her country its first gold in singles. Qingwen won her eleventh consecutive victory (remember, in July the athlete won the competition in Palermo) and won the fourth title of her career.
The Paris Olympics tennis tournament will last until August 4. Follow all the events of the “Championship”.
