PARIS (AP) — The first medal for any Russian athlete at the 2024 Olympics — technically not representing their country, but competing as neutrals, because of the war on Ukraine — came in tennis on Sunday, when Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider got a silver in women’s doubles.
Andreeva and Shnaider lost the final to Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini of Italy 2-6, 6-1, 10-7 in a match tiebreaker. Olympics doubles uses a first-to-10 tiebreaker instead of a standard third set.
Athletes from Russia and Belarus are competing at the Paris Games as Individual Neutral Athletes, known by the French acronym AIN. Those nations were banned by the International Olympic Committee from team sports at the Paris Games because of the attack on Ukraine that began in February 2022.
Individual athletes with Russian or Belarusian passports were allowed to compete as neutrals if they qualified and then were approved for entry to the Olympics.
“I’m not going to answer anything about politics here. … I’m here to talk about tennis,” Shnaider said at the post-match news conference, where both Russians wore plain white T-shirts.
When the silver medalists were asked their thoughts on competing as part of the AIN group, instead of Russia, Andreeva responded: “I have no way to answer this. For me, honestly, it doesn’t matter. I just go out there, I play and I fight. And this week, we played and we fight together.”
The AIN athletes are not allowed to wear uniforms indicating which country they’re from, so Andreeva and Shnaider wore all-white outfits on court, with no flag or other marking related to Russia. Shnaider said earlier in the tournament that she was wearing the same thing in Paris that she used last month at Wimbledon, which has a policy mandating white clothing.
On Friday, Ivan Litvinovich and Viyaleta Bardzilouskaya, both of Belarus, won the first medals by AIN athletes at the Paris Olympics, both in trampoline. Litvinovich claimed gold for the men, and Bardzilouskaya got the women’s silver. Yauheni Zalati, also from Belarus, won a silver in rowing on Saturday.
Andreeva is 17 and becomes the second-youngest player to claim a medal in Olympic tennis. Jennifer Capriati was 16 when she won the singles gold for the United States at Barcelona in 1992.
The 20-year-old Shnaider played one season of college tennis at North Carolina State. This was the first tournament she and Andreeva entered together in doubles. Andreeva was a singles semifinalist at the French Open in June.
Shnaider, whose family lives in Moscow, and Andreeva, whose training base is in Cannes, France, eliminated the second-seeded pairing of Siniakova and Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic — the Tokyo Olympics champions — in the quarterfinals.
Errani and Paolini gave Italy its first tennis gold medal at any Summer Olympics. Lorenzo Musetti won a bronze in men’s singles on Saturday. The two medals are the first for their country since one bronze at the 1924 Paris Games.
Errani, 37, completed a career Golden Slam by adding her Olympics gold medal to her five Grand Slam doubles titles — at least one at each of the four major tournaments — which she accomplished with a different partner, Roberta Vinci.
Paolini is having her best season as a professional tennis player. She is coming off runner-up finishes in singles at the French Open and Wimbledon, and she and Errani also were finalists in doubles at the French Open, where they lost to Coco Gauff and Katerina Siniakova.
Cristina Bucsa and Sara Sorribes Tormo won the bronze for Spain by defeating Karolina Muchova and Linda Noskova of the Czech Republic 6-2, 6-2 earlier Sunday.
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