So far, not a day has passed without controversial situations at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games. Either the Argentina-Morocco football match changes the score two hours after the end of the match, or the opening ceremony of the Games offends the feelings of believers… And the first major day of competition, if we are talking about a tennis tournament, was almost completely wiped out by rain.
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The organizers were unable to find a solution that would allow the players to properly practice before entering the court. According to former Russian and now Kazakh tennis player Alexander Bublik, they simply do not care about such things. Bublik lost to American Taylor Fritz in two sets in the first round of the Olympics.
“It rained for two days. Today was only my second time on the court because it has been raining for days.
“The organizers don’t care. We didn’t warm up, they told us to give us eight minutes to warm up and then go play,” Bublik said in an interview with “Championship.”
Alexander noted that in this case the risk of injury increases significantly, but since the TV rights have already been sold, no one thinks about it, unlike the ATP, where everything is in order in this regard. “The organizers are not worried about the risk of injury, because there is no warm-up before the match. They don’t care about the nuances at all, the main thing for them is that we come out. The TV rights have been sold out, so get going.”
“This is nothing compared to the ATP – heaven and earth. When I played in Tokyo at the Olympics, it felt like 50 degrees there. I would never have been allowed to play in the ATP. Although we are still unhappy with the way we are treated, we want more tolerance for the weather,” he says.
Alexander Bublik at the 2024 Paris Olympics
Photo: Matthew Stockman/Getty Images
According to Bublik, many tennis players are not keen on coming to the Olympics for this reason. “This is probably one of the reasons why not all tennis players love the Olympics. This is unusual, you have to adapt. Even the paths we take make it more difficult. Just now I was walking with a man, he asked me why we were walking like this, because here it takes two minutes and we walk 10. For some reason they blocked everything,” the athlete concluded.
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Novak Djokovic, a 24-time Grand Slam champion, highlighted another problem. When someone is eliminated from the singles draw at ATP tournaments, his place is taken by a lucky loser, who is usually also a good singles player, otherwise he would not have qualified. The Olympics are a different matter. There is no qualification as such, and if a player is withdrawn, his place is taken by a doubles representative.
This is exactly what happened with Djokovic’s opponent in the first round. Australian Matthew Ebden is an excellent player, the third racket in the world in the corresponding category. But he has not played singles for two years, since Winston-Salem 2022. And what result could he show in the match with Novak?
Ebden’s main achievements in this match are, firstly, that he did not allow the Serb to complete the so-called “golden” set (i.e. winning 24 points out of 24 in the game), and secondly, he managed to take one game at the end of the match.
“Look, I don’t really understand the rules. They’re actually a bit illogical, in my opinion. You know, if someone refuses, they call up the doubles players to play singles. I honestly don’t think it gives the sport a good image. There were a lot of singles players who had time, who were substitutes and could be called up.
“I think this needs to be changed. This happened at every Olympic Games I’ve participated in. And this is the fifth one. I just don’t understand this rule. I hope they change it,” Djokovic said at the post-match press conference.
Matthew Ebden at the 2024 Olympics
Photo: frame from the broadcast.
And after the match he announced that he was officially retiring from singles. “It’s safe to say that after this I will officially retire from singles. Novak, it was a pleasure to share the court with you in the last match on Court Philippe Chatrier here at the Olympics. I wish you all the best for the tournament. If not one of our Australians, I hope you win a gold medal,” the 36-year-old wrote on his social media.
Rafael Nadal, a 22-time major winner, has expressed his dissatisfaction with his schedule. He finished his first-round doubles match with Carlos Alcaraz in the late afternoon, and his singles match was moved to an afternoon session the following day.
“At two in the afternoon? Am I playing? I don’t understand, it’s 10 at night. I think this is outrageous. I will have to talk to the team to understand what option will be the best to achieve results,” Nadal said at a press conference.
Carlos Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal at the 2024 Paris Olympics
Photo: Clive Brunskill/Getty Images
US Open 2021 champion Daniil Medvedev said he refused to live in the Olympic Village due to logistical difficulties. “There are many different reasons, but in the end you get very tired. Tennis players are used to having our own hectic routine, everything planned minute by minute. While you arrive at the Olympic dining room, while you queue for food, while you return, while you get on the bus.
“In Tokyo, I saw that not all tennis players lived in the Olympic Village. There are only 15 neutral athletes here. I decided that if I want a medal, it’s better to live in a hotel,” Medvedev said in an interview with the Championships.
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Canadian journalist Stephanie Miles, in particular, did not like the work of two commentators on the English-language broadcast. In one of the threads, it was a woman who incorrectly called the visual system for monitoring the accuracy of the referees’ decisions. “She calls the electronic system VAR… I’m looking for other streams,” the journalist wrote on the social network X (formerly Twitter).
In another thread, a man commented with a Scottish accent so thick it was almost impossible to understand. “They invited Jackie Stewart (legendary Scottish Formula 1 driver – Championship Note) to the Garcia-Christian match. More precisely, not him. But a guy with a Scottish accent so thick it is almost impossible to understand.
When broadcasting to the whole world, the accent should be as neutral as possible. So that everyone can understand, even if English is not their mother tongue. Or even if it is. But I think they don’t care,” the journalist added.
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She also didn’t like the way the organizers rescheduled the meetings. “It looks terrible. They moved the Gauff/Pegula vs. Perez/Saville match to Lenglen Court for the 5th match there. Everything else was cancelled (except Philippe Chatrier on court). They clearly want to give Gauff more time,” Miles wrote.
Another technical point worth noting is that the score was not always displayed correctly on the broadcast – the information was sent late. This problem occasionally arises on the official ATP and WTA websites, but almost never on the broadcasts.
“Overall, it’s not the best start to the tournament,” Tennis Up to Date journalist Samuel Gill summed up. It’s hard to disagree.
