Mirra Andreeva and Diana Schneider won the only medal for Russian tennis players at the Paris Olympics on Sunday — silver in women's doubles.
They were waiting for the party to continueRussian tennis and the Olympic Games have a long history of love. While many top professionals from other countries treated the fact that for any other athlete the main start of life with a half-hearted attitude, our players have never broken with the trend. Already in 1992 in Barcelona — at the second Games after tennis returned to the Olympic program after a 64-year break — representatives of the CIS team took two bronzes. Andrey Cherkasov and the pair Leila Meskhi/Natalia Zvereva distinguished themselves, despite the fact that at that time our masters of the big racket could not be called stars.
Well, when these stars really lit up in our country, Olympic medals in tennis began to arrive in Russia almost like a conveyor belt. Sydney 2000 — gold for Yevgeny Kafelnikov and silver for Elena Dementieva. Beijing 2008 — the Russian podium for Dementieva, Dinara Safina and Vera Zvonareva. London 2012 — silver for Maria Sharapova and bronze for the pair Maria Kirilenko/Nadezhda Petrova. Rio 2016 — gold for Elena Vesnina/Ekaterina Makarova. Finally, Tokyo 2020 — gold and silver in the mixed doubles (Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova/Andrey Rublev and Vesnina/Aslan Karatsev) and second place for Karen Khachanov in singles.
At the Games in Paris, one could well expect a «continuation of the party.» Even after Tokyo medalists Rublev and Khachanov refused to participate in the Games, plus Karatsev and Veronika Kudermetova were not allowed to participate for unclear reasons, the Russian team had a very fighting seven: the world's fifth racket Daniil Medvedev, rising stars of women's tennis Mirra Andreeva and Diana Schneider, the highly experienced Vesnina paired with Ekaterina Alexandrova, as well as Roman Safiullin and Pavel Kotov, who are quite capable of springing a surprise at any tournament.
The pre-start forecasts of the wise president of the Russian Tennis Federation Shamil Tarpischev also sounded quite optimistic. Of course, he aptly noted that the clay of the Roland Garros stadium is not the most optimal surface for our current masters, and in addition, performing in neutral status under the close attention of everyone possible is a separate psychological «pressure». But in general, with a successful draw and no health problems, according to the head of Russian tennis, it was possible to count on a result at the level of the Tokyo Olympics.
Rain spoiled the mood not only of swimmers in the SeineBut the Parisian soil from the very beginning turned out to be literally slippery for our players. The rains, washing away sewage from the Parisian streets into the Seine and spoiling the mood of the triathletes, and along with them the organizers of the Games, also interfered with the tennis players. As is known, at Roland Garros only two courts are equipped with a retractable roof, which meant that most of the participants in the tennis tournament would have to play on courts that periodically became damp, even though they were covered with tarpaulins. In the end, it was this factor that destroyed the hopes of our main contender for an Olympic medal.
Although Medvedev entered three disciplines — singles, doubles and mixed, he clearly did not take the last two with 100% seriousness. In doubles, he lost together with Safiullin in the first round to the Germans Kevin Kravitz and Tim Puetz, and then in the mixed duet with Andreeva he did not distinguish himself with anything memorable in the match against the Italians Sara Errani and Andrea Vavassori, who were clearly inferior to the Russians in the singles class, but outplayed them in team actions. It was clear that Daniil was going first and foremost for the solo award.
But in the end, Medvedev stumbled in the third round against his first serious opponent (Australian Rinki Hijikata and Austrian Sebastian Ofner, who were beaten in the first and second rounds, are obviously not such for Russia's strongest tennis player). Canadian Felix Auger-Aliassime, however, was also not a favorite in the match with Daniil, if only because he lost all seven personal meetings with him. But still, he is a player in the world's top twenty — and such players are dangerous by default.
And as luck would have it, it was raining in Paris that day, and the Russian and Canadian were put on a court with no roof. The clay became really slow due to the humidity, which was extremely inconvenient for Medvedev's attacking game. Danya, of course, tried to do everything possible, but Auger-Aliassime slowly but surely took the key points for himself, and in the decisive moment in the tie-break of the second set, he was practically flawless.
“Yes, Medvedev beat the Canadian seven times, but not on clay, but on hard court. There was no luck here — the match was interrupted due to rain, and the courts became damp. On a slow court, Danya looked like a defensive player, not an attacking one,” stated Tarpishchev, summing up Medvedev’s performance at the Olympics: “The Canadian was not a tennis player who could crush him on serve, he entered the court, Danya was forced to play on stretches almost all the time, and he had nothing left with which he could win. «.
No medal was expected from this pair. Of the other Russians in the singles, only Safiullin can be singled out — he reached the third round, in which he gave several episodes of excellent play against the future silver medalist of the Games, Spaniard Carlos Alcaraz. The rest were disappointing — including Andreeva and Schneider. They lost to rivals who can hardly be considered their equals now — Magda Linett from Poland and Wang Xiyu from China, respectively.
Alexandrova's Olympics didn't go well either — either in singles or in pairs with Vesnina. But when only Mirra and Diana remained in the Paris 2024 tennis tournament, disappointment gradually began to turn into hope. Which, to be honest, was initially not much: after all, young Russian tennis players are primarily singles and have practically no experience playing in pairs.
But Andreeva and Schneider started knocking out experienced pairs one after another from the very first round. First, the perky Russians sent home Australians Ajla Tomljanovic and Olivia Gadecki, then literally swept the fifth-seeded Canadians Gabriela Dabrowski and Leyla Fernandez off the court, giving them only four games. Then it was the turn of Tokyo Olympic champions Katerina Siniakova and Barbora Krejcikova: Mirra and Diana treated the titles of the second pair of the tournament without any reverence and also smashed their opponents in two sets.
It is difficult to say how the semi-final would have turned out if the Russians' opponents had been the Ukrainians Lyudmila and Nadezhda Kichenok. In today's times, one could expect anything — including nationalistic chants from the stands, which were heard at the pair's previous matches. But thanks to the Spanish Cristina Buksha and Sara Sorribes-Tormo: they spared Mirra and Diana an unnecessary psychological test, and then they themselves — and without a chance — lost to the Russians in the semi-final.
After such a series of victories, many thought that Andreeva and Schneider had become the favorites of the final. But only Tarpischev, who had not seen anything, predicted a difficult match for the Russians with the Italians Jasmine Paolini and the same Errani. «Paolini plays consistently and powerfully, Errani plays well from the volley, you need to put together the solitaire in such a way as to make the game as unpleasant as possible for the opponents and then use your skills and chances,» he noted.
But the main thing, according to Tarpischev, for Andreeva and Schneider was to play for their own pleasure, not paying attention to the expectations of others and thoughts about Olympic gold. As it seemed, at first the Russians succeeded in this perfectly: with the same youthful enthusiasm, they took the first set without any problems, and then, when Errani took a medical break, they started playing with each other, which amused the spectators a little.
And then the reasons for fun began to disappear: Paolini stopped making mistakes, 37-year-old Errani began to fly around the court like a 17-year-old, and Andreeva, who is exactly that age, suddenly lost her aim — and the same thing happened to Schneider later. In the second set, the Italians gave our girls a rout. Well, in the tennis lottery, which, no matter how you look at it, is either a regular tie-break or a shortened game with the prefix «super», Paolini and Errani were lucky — although our guys even pulled out what was impossible to pull out at decisive moments.
To sum up, we can state: the solitaire in Paris did not work out not only for Andreeva and Schneider in the match for the Olympic gold, but also for all Russian tennis players. As for Diana and Mirra, of course, their «chemistry» as a couple, which for many came out of nowhere, gave them Olympic silver — and this is a plus, but still, in the future, their main goal will remain singles, and this is what the girls will prioritize in their careers.
Will those of our players who did not realize their Olympic hopes manage to do this at the next Games? More likely yes than no. In Los Angeles, the courts will be one hundred percent hard, on which Medvedev feels like a fish in water. Well, the fact that he will be four years older is not a problem. Look at Novak Djokovic, at 37 years old, two months after knee surgery, he showed an absolutely phenomenal game at the Olympic Games, bringing him gold on his fifth attempt.