Although history and facts say that tennis and the Olympic Games have had their comings and goings - it figured in the first edition, 1896, but they broke up in 1924 and did not rejoin the program again until 1988 - the racket entered through the big door in Tokyo.
Ascending Mount Fuji, exactly.
The image of Naomi Osaka climbing the steps and carrying the torch in the National Stadium to light the cauldron will be forever engraved, something that no other tennis player had done before.
These were his Games and that, his moment.
A multiracial message towards the world and sports as an integrating factor.
Then, on the track, came the disappointment.
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Pablo Carreño and a bronze gestated between the sheets
Novak Djokovic's Olympic crash
Osaka, a sports symbol of his country, is still haunted by ghosts.
He had not competed for two months, since he was planted in Paris due to his mental health, denouncing that the elite athlete is subjected to excessive stress and acknowledging that he had suffered a depression, and despite successfully avoiding his premiere it was diluted in the second round.
So the dream turned into a bad dream.
"It meant a lot to win here," he admitted.
"But there was a lot of pressure and I didn't know how to deal with it," he said after falling in the second round against Marketa Vondrousova.
The national icon said goodbye and in a flash, Japan's eyes were glassy.
She was one of the characters in the Games, as was Novak Djokovic. The Serbian arrived at a gallop, collecting victories and growing, already with 20
majors
in the card, but if Osaka's slip was sounded, his was superior. Incomprehensibly, the number one collapsed against Alexander Zverev in the semifinals and the next day collapsed again, as if bronze were no consolation. It was gold or nothing for him. The rest, a nuisance. His downturn coincided with the hunger of Pablo Carreño and the Asturian, an oak in the middle of a more than hostile landscape, hung a bronze that tastes of glory. It is the accolade to a worker.
“I am happier than when I win a tournament.
I have won the Davis Cup, ATP tournaments, I have come far in important events ... But I have never had this feeling ”, transmitted the man from Gijón, who before knocking down Djokovic had already knocked down the world's two, Daniil Medvedev.
Sir tournament yours.
In this way, he became the fifth Spanish player to achieve an individual medal, the sixth taking into account that Arantxa Sánchez Vicario obtained two.
There are, in total, 13 medals for Spain in the modality.
And Carreño (30 years old) did it, sleeping soundly the day before: “Nine and a half hours at a stretch.
As never before".
Osaka, during the match against Vondrousova.TIZIANA FABI / AFP
His biting teeth caused the rackets to fly through the air or end up shattered.
Medvedev's landed in the second tier and Djokovic's followed the same path;
worst fate was the next one, blown up against a post.
"The pressure is a privilege", said a couple of days before Nole, who carries a heavy load on his shoulders because he wants everything and does not allow a single mistake.
She failed and consequently the chance to repeat Germany's Steffi Graf's exceptional achievement in 1988, when she won the big four and gold, was gone.
"I am physically and mentally exhausted, but I do not regret at all having come," he said goodbye.
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Naomi Osaka, from dream to bad dream
Tennis in Tokyo, an oven among cicadas
The clarification of the Balkan's departure was taken advantage of by the lanky Zverev, an enigma that comes and goes. Still without fangs in the big ones, little by little he is shaping an already important file. "The Olympic title, the Masters Cup, 15 ATP tournaments, four Masters 1000 ...", he was in charge of reciting. But the icing is missing. In any case, in his first participation (as Carreño) he achieved what Becker himself did not even achieve, a German totem with Graf and who closed his career with gold in doubles (Barcelona 92), but without the individual mark. Godfather in his Zverev day, today they cannot even be seen.
Quite the opposite of Carla Suárez and Garbiñe Muguruza, who share a good friendship and wanted to mark one last dance before the Canarian said goodbye to the Olympic event, after four successive presences. They fell together, in tears, and the next day the former number one melted into the eighth. The body betrayed him, but without consequences; the mallet directly shook Paula Badosa, who suffered a heat stroke and left in a wheelchair. The ravages of a tournament in which the humidity forced to correct schedules on the fly, and from which Sara Sorribes was granting herself another luxury:
ko
to Ashleigh Barty, number one, in the first round. The Swiss Belinda Bencic was the great winner: she repeated gold in singles and doubles.
Without Rafael Nadal, Roger Federer or Serena Williams, weighing those three absences, tennis provided a roller coaster with a happy ending for Spain: there is Carreño, smiling and with metal in his hands.
Since returning to Seoul 1988, only once, in 2012, the Spanish team did not hunt any bounty.
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