Tennis competition at the Olympics: Tennis star Djokovic crowned Olympic champion for the first time

With immense determination, superstar Novak Djokovic has secured his first Olympic gold medal in a tennis career full of records. The 37-year-old narrowly won the thrilling and high-class final at the Summer Games in France against French Open champion Carlos Alcaraz 7:6 (7:3), 7:6 (7:2). Djokovic thus crowned himself the successor to Tokyo Olympic champion Alexander Zverev and took revenge for the Wimbledon final he lost to the 21-year-old Spaniard. After 2 hours and 50 minutes, Djokovic converted his first match point.

Perhaps the last chance for Djokovic

Djokovic was determined to overcome the stigma of not winning an Olympic gold medal. His fifth Summer Games might be his last chance, as he would be 41 years old in Los Angeles in 2028. In front of around 15,000 spectators, the Serbian record Grand Slam winner won the duel with Alcaraz on the red clay in Paris because he reached his top level and slid and sprinted across the court as if the knee injury from early June had never happened. It is his second Olympic medal after bronze in 2008 in Beijing.

Like Steffi Graf, Andre Agassi, Rafael Nadal and Serena Williams, Djokovic has now achieved the Golden Slam in his career, consisting of triumphs at the four Grand Slam tournaments and the Olympic victory. In doing so, he stopped the winning streak of silver medalist Alcaraz, who had recently triumphed at the French Open and Wimbledon. Bronze went to the Italian Zverev conqueror Lorenzo Musetti.

Three weeks after the Wimbledon final, the atmosphere on Court Philippe-Chatrier was great from the start, with a small brass band and drummers adding to the heat. Djokovic had thought he had better chances than at the grass court classic in London, where he had been given a lesson for long stretches just a few weeks after his knee operation. And in fact, the match turned out to be completely different.

The first set lasts longer than Zverev’s Olympic final

IOC President Thomas Bach and US tennis star Serena Williams initially sat next to each other in the front row and saw how the two protagonists fought doggedly for every game in the first set. The oldest (Djokovic) and the youngest finalist (Alcaraz) in the men’s singles in recent Olympic history both missed break opportunities.

Alcaraz had to serve twice to avoid losing the first set, but was not disturbed by a set point against him at 5:6. The tension of the first set culminated in the tiebreak, which Djokovic won with four points in a row. The first set alone lasted 93 minutes, making it longer than the entire final three years ago in Japan, when Zverev gave the Russian Karen Khachanov hardly any chance in just 79 minutes.

The thrilling rallies and tension continued in the second set. Again, the two finalists held all their service games and again it went to a tiebreak. Once again, Djokovic was the better player in this decisive moment.