From Rio to Paris: How Elena Vesnina and Ekaterina Makarova Made Olympic History in Tennis

On Sunday, August 4, the whole country gathers around young and talented people Mirra Andreeva and Diana Schneider. Our tennis players will compete for gold at the Games in Paris with the Italians Sarai Errani and Yasmin Paolini.

Fortunately, Mirra and Diana have someone to follow as an example!

Maybe they didn’t make it to Rio

The Olympic Games in Rio in 2016 promised to be as grueling as possible for Russian athletes. It is simply worth not allowing our boys to participate in athletic competitions. However, in tennis, our compatriots managed to show themselves at the best level. gold Elena Vesnina and Ekaterina Makarova in doubles will be one of the highlights of these Games in Brazil.

Even the Grand Slam tournaments were less important to Elena and Catriona than the Olympic Games. Russian girls have always dreamed of medals at such a competition and were delighted to have the opportunity to compete as a couple at the Rio 2016 Games. True, our compatriots had many problems. Just a few days before the start of the Olympics, the Russians missed their connecting flight from Miami to Brazil due to a plane breakdown in Montreal.

Vesnina lamented that the tickets to Rio were sold out and desperately asked for help finding two seats on any plane that would take her and her partner to the Olympic Games. Thanks to a happy coincidence, the girls got on the right side of the plane, although they arrived in Rio in a completely unstable state. There was no other option but to get in shape through games at the Olympics itself.

This greatly reduced the chances of the Russian pair, but who would have thought that Vesnina and Makarova in Brazil would not give their rivals one game! First, they confidently defeated their Australian opponents, then they dealt with the Romans and the Spanish. In the semi-finals, Lena and Katya had a difficult match with the Czechs Shafarzova and Strycova. The Russians got out of a very difficult situation by winning three set points in the first game. After that, everything got a lot more fun and he ended up reaching the finals.

They deserved it and went down in history.

In the battle for gold, our girls were always one step ahead and had complete control over the course of the game. After breaking in the first game, Vesnina and Makarova confidently took the match to victory, and then did the same trick in the second set. And this despite the fact that a pair from Switzerland led by world tennis legend Martina Hingis is against them. Despite this, the Russians looked much more confident and worthy of being Olympic champions.

– I remember as a child watching the performance of Zhenya Kafelnikov in Sydney. And the victory of three Russian tennis players at the same time in Beijing, when they captured the entire podium, was usually like yesterday. All this time I was only thinking about how to get on the podium and win a medal,” Makarova admitted emotionally at a press conference.

“This couple has been playing for so many years, and the girls deserved this victory after going through many tests. At the beginning of the year, we still didn’t know if they would play, but they overcame all injuries, some psychological problems, so this is a victory for our couple,” said RIA Novosti the coach of the team national Anastasia Myskina.

Despite being seeded in seventh place, Russian tennis players won a great victory at the Olympic Games. Four years earlier, Maria Kirilenko and Nadezhda Petrov took bronze in doubles, setting a benchmark for the new generation of our compatriots. And they did not disappoint. In addition, Ekaterina and Elena improved their previous result, entering the history of the Olympics as the best tennis players in the world. Now Andreeva and Schneider have taken the baton. And the whole country supports these girls!