By: Thomas Cluck
The Olympics may have hit the halfway point already but the final day of Tennis competition concluded at the Ariake Coliseum in Japan as the Tokyo 2020/2021 Olympic Games tournament ended with Gold Medal Matches. Both Women’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles saw Medals handed out with Women’s Singles Gold Medalist Belinda Bencic of Switzerland going for a second Gold and a women’s sweep.
The battle between the Czech team of 2021 French Open singles and doubles champion Barbora Krejickova and her partner Katerina Siniakova, a much heralded junior player, and the Swiss duo of Bencic, another top junior, and veteran Viktorija Golubic, who’s enjoyed a strong summer so far, lead off play on Centre Court.
In the end, it was not to be for Bencic, possibly running out of gas, as she will leave with Gold and Silver- not too shabby a haul- alongside Golubic, falling to Krejickova and Siniakova 7-5, 6-1 in two straight sets.
It was an all-Russian Mixed Doubles Gold Medal match with newly-returning mom Elena Vesnina and Aslan Karatsev, potentially THE breakout player of this year, facing this year’s Roland Garros finalist Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Andrey Rublev.
It was a dramatic and hard-fought, highly-contested match to end the Tennis at these Games, coming down to the last possible points in a ten-point match super tiebreak in the third and final set with Pavlyuchenkova and Rublev prevailing over their Russian teammates 6-3, 6-7, 13-11 to win Gold while Vesnina and Karatsev got the Silver.
The Bronze Medal went to Australia’s Ashleigh Barty, the singles world number one and newly-minted Wimbledon champion, and John Peers, who received a walkover in yesterday’s Bronze Medal Match from Serbia’s team of Novak Djokovic, also a Wimbledon champion this year, and his partner Nina Stojanovic, a young up-and-coming Serb who’s impressed this season.