PARIS: Iga Swiatek is back in the happy hunt as he seeks his first Olympic crown to add to his four French Open titles at Roland Garros.
The Pole has been dominant on the red clay of Paris, winning four of her last five tournaments and is unbeaten there since losing to Greece's Maria Sakkari in 2021.
The five-time Grand Slam champion, who won the US Open in 2022, is looking to go further than she did at the 2021 Tokyo Games, where she defeated Paula Badosa in the round secondly.
Swiatek, 23, has had plenty of time to prepare for the Paris Olympics after withdrawing from Wimbledon, where she lost in the third round to Yulia Putintseva.
The heartbreaking defeat on the grass at the All England Club ended Swiatek's 21-match hitting streak.
He was then asked how he would prepare for the Paris Olympics.
“I'm definitely going to take a lesson and take some time off,” he said. “I don't know, I feel that even though I didn't do well in this tournament, because of the way the whole season looked, I deserved it.
“I literally have to do better because I'm not going to be able to go through the whole season playing good tennis.”
In 2020, Swiatek made a name for himself in the tennis world when he won the French Open without dropping a set.
She became the first Polish player, male or female, to win a Grand Slam singles title and has dominated the event since, with one blip coming three years ago.
Last month she beat Italy's Jasmine Paolini in the singles final, becoming the fourth woman in the modern era to win the Suzanne Lenglen Cup four times after Justine Henin, Chris Evert and Steffi Graf.
The world number one also completed a Madrid-Rome-Roland Garros clay treble. The only other woman in history to do so in the same season is Serena Williams.
Swiatek has sporting ancestry – his father Tomasz represented Poland in rowing at the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.
“Usually a young kid has trouble hitting one or two balls, but he can do it for dozens of shots,” said Artur Szostaczko, his first coach.
“He's a fighter…. I know if it comes down to a tie-break, don't worry — Iga won't buckle under the pressure.”
Szostaczko has been tutoring Swiatek since he was 10 years old.
Then he was trained by Michal Kaznowski, who remembers that Swiatek wanted to be treated like his sister Agata.
“Iga was very angry with me because I suggested a basic exercise where Agata would be given eight balls but only six for Iga because he was so young,” he said.
“It pissed him off. He goes to his father and says that he wants a lot like Agata. “
Swiatek will hope that determination will carry him through to a gold medal at his favorite venue in Paris.
