Swiatek’s left with ‘damaged coronary heart’
Iga Swiatek dabbed at her eyes with a white towel whereas sitting on her sideline chair on the 2024 Olympics after a lclean-as-can-be win Friday that earned a bronze for Poland’s first tennis medal at any Summer time Video games.
She beat Anna Karolina Schmiedlova of Slovakia 6-2, 6-1 in 59 minutes, however make no mistake: These weren’t purely tears of pleasure.
They had been, a minimum of partly, remnants of the frustration — devastation, actually — the No. 1-ranked Swiatek felt after a poor efficiency a day prior value her a shot at what she actually needed, what she form of figured she would head dwelling with gold.
“After the match, I used to be fairly confused, as a result of I nonetheless really feel like I misplaced yesterday, and that was form of an enormous loss,” Swiatek mentioned. “Then again, I received at this time … so I ought to be happy with that. There’s like quite a lot of blended feelings and nonetheless is.”
Swiatek performed far more cleanly than she did Thursday in a straight-set semi-final loss to Zheng Qinwen. That end result ended Swiatek’s 25-match unbeaten streak at Roland Garros, which incorporates three championships in a row on the French Open.
Swiatek referred to as the semi-final exit “one of many hardest losses I most likely ever had in my profession” and mentioned she wept for six hours afterwards.
“It was like,” she mentioned, “Any person actually broke my coronary heart.”
