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A fired-up Novak Djokovic on Friday reached his first Olympic ultimate, the place he’ll face Carlos Alcaraz in a dream showdown for gold, describing his achievement as “a giant deal”. Prime seed Djokovic, nonetheless looking for an elusive Olympic title to sit down alongside his 24 Grand Slams, defeated Italy’s Lorenzo Musetti 6-4, 6-2 in a tense semi-final. Alcaraz earlier grew to become the youngest males’s finalist since tennis returned to the Video games in 1988 when he swept apart Felix Auger-Aliassime 6-1, 6-1. Sunday’s title match at Roland Garros would be the pair’s seventh assembly and follows on the heels of Alcaraz’s latest victory towards Djokovic within the Wimbledon ultimate. “It is an enormous reduction,” mentioned Djokovic, whose solely success on the Olympics was a bronze medal at Beijing in 2008.
“Three out of 4 Olympic Video games, I performed semis, received bronze from the primary one in Beijing.
“So simply to safe a better medal for the primary time for my nation, no matter occurs on Sunday, is a large honour. I’ll go for gold. There is not any doubt about it — this can be a massive deal.”
The 37-year-old Djokovic, who confirmed no signal of the fitting knee damage he aggravated in Thursday’s quarter-final win over Stefanos Tsitsipas, mentioned Alcaraz could be the favorite.
The 21-year-old Spaniard captured the French Open title on the identical Courtroom Philippe Chatrier in June.
Serbia’s Djokovic mentioned he has “nothing to lose”.
“He beat me at Wimbledon. However these are completely different circumstances and I really feel I’m a greater participant than at Wimbledon.
“I’ll come out and play my greatest tennis.”
Djokovic’s fierce need to achieve the ultimate boiled over within the second set towards Musetti when he was twice warned for taking too lengthy to serve.
He was additionally warned for swearing on the umpire.
“I used to be interested by all of the semi-finals that I misplaced within the Olympic Video games earlier than at present’s match and that is why I used to be very tense on the courtroom,” admitted Djokovic.
French Open and Wimbledon champion Alcaraz hammered Canada’s Auger-Aliassime in simply 75 minutes.
“It has been an goal for the reason that begin of the 12 months to attempt to win the gold medal and now we have now one match left to attempt to get it accomplished,” mentioned Alcaraz.
The Spanish star broke the Nineteenth-ranked Auger-Aliassime thrice within the first set, racing away with six consecutive video games.
He broke twice within the second set on his technique to claiming a fourth successive win over the Canadian.
“The ultimate is essential for me and the Spanish folks however I attempt not to consider how vital it’s and can deal with the match,” mentioned Alcaraz.
He’s the fourth Spanish man to achieve the Olympic males’s ultimate after Jordi Arrese at Barcelona in 1992, Sergi Bruguera in Atlanta 4 years later and Rafael Nadal, who received gold at Beijing in 2008.
A day after her 25-match Roland Garros win streak was ended by Zheng Qinwen, world primary Iga Swiatek returned to courtroom to say the bronze medal for girls’s singles.
The 23-year-old simply defeated Slovakia’s Anna Karolina Schmiedlova 6-2, 6-1.
“Yesterday was one of many hardest losses I in all probability ever had in my profession,” mentioned Swiatek.
“I cried for about six hours. It was like somebody broke my coronary heart.”
The primary gold medal of the Olympics tennis occasion got here in blended doubles when the Czech pair of Katerina Siniakova and boyfriend Tomas Machac beat China’s Wang Xinyu and Zhang Zhizhen 6-2, 5-7, 10-8.
Within the bronze medal play-off, Auger-Aliassime teamed up with Gabriela Dabrowski to defeat Demi Schuurs and Wesley Koolhof of the Netherlands.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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