Serena & Venus Williams celebrate on the podium after receiving their gold medal for winning the London 2012 Olympic Games women’s doubles tennis tournament on Saturday, August 5, 2012.
They defeated Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka of Czechoslovakia 6-4, 6-4 under a closed roof on a rainy afternoon at the All England Club.
Serena became the first tennis double gold medalist at an Olympics since her sister, Venus, won singles and double at the 2000 Sydney Games. The sisters also won the doubles gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
With Sunday’s victory, they each have a record four Olympic tennis gold medals, and the sisters didn’t drop a set through their five matches at the London Games.
On Saturday, Serena completed her career Golden Slam in an impressive dominating performance over Russian Maria Sharapova 6-0, 6-1. Serena seemed completely focused and determined. Maria didn’t have a chance.
After the match, Serena said: “I’ve never played better. Playing against Maria you have to be at your best. I knew that. She won the French Open, she never loses this year. She’s playing the finals of everything so I knew it was going to be tough.”
Maria responded: “Serena was playing incredibly confident tennis today, particularly considering how windy it was… There are always things you think you could have done better, but my opponent just played too well today… A silver medal means a lot to me, though. It’s always disappointing to lose in the final, but it’s great to get a medal in my first Olympic Games.”
14 time Grand Slam singles champion Serena is now 44-15 in WTA singles finals. Serena won the 2010 Australian Open and Wimbledon titles, then stepped on broken glass at a restaurant after Wimbledon and was sidelined for about 11 months, during which she also suffered from a pulmonary embolism. Upon returning to play last year Serena won the Stanford and Toronto titles; this year she has won at Stanford, Wimbledon, Charleston and Madrid.
Serena has a 44-3 singles match record this year, with losses to Ekaterina Makarova, Caroline Wozniacki, and Virginie Razzano.
