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Kvitová flew to Tokyo for about her last Olympics

Updates: 17.07.2021 16:42
Released: 17.07.2021, 14:28

Prague – Tennis player Petra Kvitová took the direction of Tokyo today and headed for her fourth and probably last Olympic Games. Five years ago, she won bronze in singles in Rio de Janeiro, and the Czech team has medal prerequisites for the Japanese tournament under five circles.

“The chances of medals are 100% in singles and doubles. Each of us has shown our qualities this year. I hope that the audience has something to look forward to,” said Kvitová at Václav Havel Airport.

He hopes to build on his better results this year at the Olympics. She won the tournament in Doha and was in the semifinals on the grass in Bad Homburg. “So far, the season has been up and down, so hopefully it will go up again now. Anyway, I already have a medal and the pressure should drop in that sense. I’m looking forward to it, it will probably be my last Olympics, so I’ll try to enjoy it,” she said. Kvitová.

The two-time Wimbledon winner had her Olympic premiere in Beijing in 2008, where she only competed in doubles and played one game with Lucie Šafářová in the first round. Four years later, in London, she reached the quarterfinals in singles on the popular grass at Wimbledon.

In 2016, she celebrated bronze on a hard surface in Rio, Brazil. “It will be very difficult to repeat. Despite a few cancellations, the tournament will be full and, as we know, anything is possible in women’s tennis now,” said Kvitová, 31, who did not want to talk about the defense. “You can’t say that. We are used to defending every year and not every five years,” she recalled of the four-year Olympic cycle, which in the case of Tokyo stretched after the postponement of the games due to the coronavirus pandemic for a year.

The former world number two was not inspired by the bronze medal when packing at home. “I pretend I don’t have one to get one,” the winner of twenty-eight WTA singles tournaments joked, adding, “I have it at home, it’s not exceptionally with my parents, but I haven’t looked at it.”

Kvitová has not been very successful in recent weeks. She withdrew from Roland Garros before the second round due to an injured ankle and dropped out at Wimbledon in the 1st round. This week she lost her first match on concrete in Prague, Sparta, and complained of a sore leg. “I’ve been training a bit, it wasn’t much, but at least somehow. I’m getting better physically, I still have a few days to prepare.”

She was looking forward to other Czech athletes in the Olympic Village. “It’ll be a great bunch again like last time,” she recalled at Rio. But it won’t be the same, in Tokyo athletes are not allowed to go to support each other and there will be no fans in the auditorium. “It feels sad to play without them. The Olympics would deserve spectators and athletes to cheer on each other, but we just have to take it that way,” she said.

At the Brazilian Games, she won the podium in a red skirt and a blue T-shirt. She picked up the T-shirts for Tokyo at the airport before the trip and was a little surprised that they were red. “I thought if there was no mistake, but not. I’ll be the other way around, which is a surprise to me,” she said, but she wasn’t angry, because red would fit her fast. “Red is good, aggressive,” she nodded.

They set out together with Markéta Vondroušová. Roland Garros winner Barbora Krejčíková, who will also play doubles with Kateřina Siniaková, and recent Wimbledon finalist Karolína Plíšková will arrive in Tokyo next week for singles.

Olympics tennis Kvitová

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