Nadal and Alcaraz’s Olympic dream ends in defeat
Rafael Nadal and Carlos Alcaraz’s dreams of an Olympic medal in doubles were ended by a quarter-final loss to American fourth seeds Austin Krajicek and Rajeev Ram.
The Spanish duo have been one of the star attractions of the tennis event at Roland Garros and another packed crowd cheered them on under the roof on Court Philippe Chatrier.
But this time they met their match as Krajicek and Ram, two of the best doubles players in the game, showed their prowess in the format to claim a 6-2 6-4 victory.
Nadal has been tight-lipped about his future but this could be the 14-time French Open champion’s farewell to Paris, and the crowd stood to applaud as he waved to all sides of the court before walking off.
Alcaraz stayed on course for a gold-medal clash with Novak Djoko vic in singles earlier after both reached the quarterfinals. Djokovic was first out on Chatrier yesterday against German dom inikkoepfe rand defied the hot and humid conditions to claim a 7-5 6-3 win.
The Serbian is the first player in the modern era to reach the quarter-finals in singles at four different Olympics but he is yet to make a final and has only one bronze medal, from Beijing 16 years ago, to show for his efforts.
“Bringing a medal to Serbia is always a big goal of mine, has been since my first Olympic Games in Beijing, where I managed to get my only medal so far,” he said. “I had actually some really good Olympic Games but that semi-final hurdlewas, three out off our times, tough for me to go through.”
Al car az, meanwhile, became the youngest man since Djokovic in the Chinese capital to reach the last eight, beating Roman Safiullin 6-4 6-2.
Djokovic next faces eighth seed Stefanos Tsitsipas while Alcaraz will play American Tommy Paul in a rematch of their Wimbledon quarterfinal.