The Queen of Clay from Poland Iga Swiatek won’t be able to add another major honour other than her successive Roland Garros trophies in the Olympics gold medal this time around following her straight sets loss in the women’s singles semi-final v China’s Qinwen Zheng, who was also runner-up at the 2024 Australian Open Final back in January to Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka, 2-6 & 5-7. She didn’t have a great start earlier on and although she did the best possible to keep that semi alive so Iga can activate that 3rd set decider, but it wasn’t meant to be when Zheng found a way to shut her down towards the end.
I don’t know when the next Olympics tennis tournament will be on clay but probably not for another long while like for a few decades unfortunately in which she may be well and truly reaching retirement by then. What she can do though is at least finish off on a high when it comes to the Bronze Medal Match this weekend v the losing player from the other semi-final.
We’ll see how that goes between Anna Karolina Schmiedlova from Slovakia v Croatian Donna Vekic who defeated NZ’s Lulu Sun during the Wimbledon Quarter-Final last month.
And how good was Qinwen Zheng with that magnificent performance in the hope of now winning her first major title that may not be a grand slam honour just yet but at least a Olympic Games Gold Medal would be nice to take home. She had an easy first set and while she had some challenges along the way that is going to make or break when being tested against the Queen of Clay (Iga Swiatek), she too never gave up with plenty of fight to hold Iga back and that was one thing Zheng pulled off well by seeing light at the end of the tunnel on what has been another of her best plays today. Now she’s ready to bring home an Olympics gold medal for China which she could be the first one to do so as a singles player and the last time China won a medal in Tennis was Li Ting & Sun Tiantian during the women’s doubles tournament exactly 20 years back in Athens.