The Olympic Women’s final Tennis bouts almost seemed like a Billie Jean King Cup (formerly know as Fed Cup) match between Switzerland and Czechia. First, Saturday’s final Women’s Tennis Singles match featured a duel between Czech rising star Markéta Vondroušová and Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic. After a long battle, B. Bencic came out victorious. While she earned this gold medal for Switzerland, she is a descendant of Czechoslovakian emigrants. Her grandparents escaped Slovakia during the Prague Spring period in 1968, and settled in Switzerland. Belinda Bencic herself still prefers to speak Slovakian, and thus a few attentive viewers of the final could hear her expressing her emotions in surprisingly similar words to the Czech player’s. On Sunday, the final Women’s Tennis Doubles match came along and featured the same two countries. On the Czech side, two long time tennis partners Kateřina Siniaková and Barbora Krejčíková faced Viktorija Golubic and Saturday’s gold medalist Belinda Bencic. The Czechs were hungry for revenge, and so they managed to win the match in just two sets, despite the grueling Tokyo heat that tormented players throughout the tournament. These two tennis medals, a silver and a gold, have brought up the Czech medal total up to 8, with 4 gold, 3 silver and 1 bronze medals. This means that our small nation sits at the 13th place in the Olympic rankings, way ahead of countries with much larger populations and much larger area.
