Iga Swiatek has revealed that she spent six hours crying after feeling like someone “broke her heart” when she lost in the semi-final of the Olympics, blowing her chance to fight for a gold medal.
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But just a day later, the world No. 1 returned to the same court and won the bronze medal. After a rollercoaster 24 hours, Swiatek confessed that her emotional run had taught her to show more “humility” after realising that she stopped playing for herself and started playing for others when the pressure got to her.
Swiatek took her semi-final loss to Qinwen Zheng very hard. She debated the match point with the umpire and didn’t shake the official’s hand at the end. She then walked away from a TV interview to cry and skipped the rest of her media duties.
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She managed to, in her own words, “get it together” in time for the bronze medal playoff where she beat Anna Karolina Schmiedlova 6-2 6-1 to claim her first Olympic medal. After the victory, the 23-year-old explained just how emotional she was before forcing herself to turn it around.
“You don’t wanna know,” Swiatek laughed when asked how she spent the last 24 hours. “Well truth be told, I don’t remember, maybe I cried like that after losing in Australia after I won my first Grand Slam. After Roland Garros that was in October and then we started the season in Australia, I lost and I cried for like three days basically. I think if I wasn’t playing today I would cry [for] over a week. So I needed to get it together.
“I probably cried for like six hours yesterday. It was really tough. I don’t know, sometimes it feels like it’s sport and it’s tennis and usually I’m able to have the distance to all of it and just understand that it’s only one part of my life but this time it was like somebody really broke my heart, you know? So it’s crazy, honestly.
But the five-time Grand Slam champion will use her Olympics experience as a lesson to be learned. She continued: “Because of the fact that I happened, I know I still have so much work to do to understand myself and what’s happening to me sometimes a little bit better. Because of the fact that I am No. 1 for such a long time and I won so many tournaments, I literally felt that I can handle everything, you know?
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Iga Swiatek bounced back to win her first Olympic medal (Image: Getty)
“And this tournament showed me that’s still not the case. So actually, I was maybe a little bit too arrogant with myself because I thought that I’ve handled so much pressure before that I think I’m going to handle this one as well. And now I’m motivated to work even harder and I think I’m going to have a bit more humility with everything so I think this actually can end up with me working better in the future.”
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It’s not the first time that Swiatek has struggled at the Olympics – she was also in tears when she lost in the second round in Tokyo three years ago. But after her semi-final match against Zheng – which she branded “one of the toughest losses I probably ever had in my career” – she realised the extent of her struggles at the Games.
“Honestly, during the competition, I wasn’t really aware that it was so much because I understood that I was stressed and I accepted that it was going to be that way. I was in Tokyo and I saw how hard it is and how different this tournament is than what I had on tour. I think [the issue was] playing these few matches in a row without having a little bit of time to not really think about tennis, which I’m more used to now when we have longer 1000 tournaments and Grand Slams,” she explained.
“This plus the fact that I actually realised yesterday that I wasn’t really playing for myself, I was more playing for everybody else, for the country, for my team, for everybody that hoped that I’m going to win a medal and probably win a gold medal. I think I talked about it, I tried to work through it but I wasn’t quite aware of how deep it was in me and how much of a baggage that was. So I only realised that after I lost and honestly I know I haven’t been playing my A-game here probably, I wasn’t feeling like I can move really naturally and in a way that I am used to, especially on clay.”
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Although she bounced back for the bronze medal playoff, Swiatek confessed that she was still feeling mixed emotions when she sat on her bench after beating Schmiedlova. She said: “When I sat down after the match I was really confused because I still feel like I lost yesterday and it was a huge loss but on the other hand I won today and it was tough as well so I should be proud of that.
“There’s a lot of mixed emotions and still is. I think I’m going to have a few days of negative emotions from yesterday and then they’re going to pass and I’m going to remember winning the bronze medal – I hope so, I guess.”
As Swiatek tries to learn how to cope better with the pressure, she will be using one of her fellow young Grand Slam champions as an example. “I actually am watching Carlos Alcaraz and I can see he’s enjoying every minute of it and he’s a great example actually of how to handle all of that well,” she smiled.
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