PARIS (AP) — The first medal for any Russian athlete at the 2024 Olympics — technically not representing their country, but competing as neutrals, because of the war on Ukraine — came in tennis on Sunday, when Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider got a silver in women’s doubles.
Andreeva and Shnaider lost the final to Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini of Italy 2-6, 6-1, 10-7 in a match tiebreaker. Olympics doubles uses a first-to-10 tiebreaker instead of a standard third set.
Athletes from Russia and Belarus are competing at the Paris Games as Individual Neutral Athletes, known by the French acronym AIN. Those nations were banned by the International Olympic Committee from team sports at the Paris Games because of the attack on Ukraine that began in February 2022.
Individual athletes with Russian or Belarusian passports were allowed to compete as neutrals if they qualified and then were approved for entry to the Olympics.
On Friday, Ivan Litvinovich and Viyaleta Bardzilouskaya, both of Belarus, won the first medals by AIN athletes at the Paris Olympics, both in trampoline. Litvinovich claimed gold for the men, and Bardzilouskaya got the women’s silver. Yauheni Zalati, also from Belarus, won a silver in rowing on Saturday.
The AIN athletes are not allowed to wear uniforms indicating which country they’re from, so Andreeva and Shnaider wore all-white outfits, with no flag or other markings related to Russia. Shnaider said her outfit in Paris is the one she used last month at Wimbledon, which has a policy mandating white clothing.
Andreeva is 17 and becomes the second-youngest player to claim a medal in Olympic tennis. Jennifer Capriati was 16 when she won the singles gold for the United States at Barcelona in 1992.
The 20-year-old Shnaider played one season of college tennis at North Carolina State.
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Shnaider, whose family lives in Moscow, and Andreeva, whose training base is in Cannes, France, eliminated the second-seeded pairing of Siniakova and Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic — the Tokyo Olympics champions — in the quarterfinals.
Errani and Paolini gave Italy its first tennis gold medal at any Summer Olympics. Lorenzo Musetti won a bronze in men’s singles on Saturday. The two medals are the first for their country since one bronze at the 1924 Paris Games.
Errani, 37, completed a career Golden Slam by adding her Olympics gold medal to her five Grand Slam doubles titles — at least one at each of the four major tournaments — which she accomplished with a different partner, Roberta Vinci.
Paolini is having her best season as a professional tennis player. She is coming off runner-up finishes in singles at the French Open and Wimbledon, and she and Errani also were finalists in doubles at the French Open, where they lost to Coco Gauff and Katerina Siniakova.
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