Page 8
August 10, 2016
S PORTS
Williams Sister Olympic Loss
First time loss in the doubles tennis match
Serena and Venus Williams
never had lost an Olympic doubles
match until Sunday night, going
15-0 and earning three gold med-
als together.
Their first-round opponents
at the Rio de Janeiro Games, the
Czech Republic’s Lucie Safarova
and Barbora Strycova, never had
won any sort of match as a pair, at
any event. And they had zero wins
between them in Olympic doubles
competition, going a combined
0-3 with other partners.
So it was rather stunning, to
say the least, when the Williams
sisters were beaten 6-3, 6-4 by
Safarova and Strycova in the first
round in Rio.
“We played terrible,” Serena
said, “and it showed in the re-
sults.”
The American duo was seed-
ed No. 1 and coming off a 14th
Grand Slam championship togeth-
er at Wimbledon a month ago.
The Czechs, meanwhile, are
unseeded. And get this: They
weren’t even supposed to be play-
ing together at the Olympics. Stry-
cova was a late replacement for
Karolina Pliskova, who withdrew
from the tournament.
Indeed, Strycova and Safarova
only had played one match as a
team before Sunday — and they
lost that, in a Fed Cup match last
year.
“That’s true, but we are really
good friends. We know each oth-
er’s games,” said Strycova, never
better than a doubles semifinalist
at a Grand Slam tournament. “I
know what I have to do on the
court, and she knows what she has
to do.”
Safarova is a strong doubles
player, and she won two major
titles in 2015 with Bethanie Mat-
C harles k ruPa /aP
Venus Williams, right, discusses their point loss with sister Sere-
na in the doubles match against Czech Republic players Barbora
Strycova and Lucie Safarova.
tek-Sands of the United States.
When the Czechs found out
who they’d be facing to start
things off in Brazil, Safarova said
their reaction was: “The draw
could be better.”
And then she and Strycova
started laughing.
“But it was a challenge,” Sa-
farova continued, “and we love
challenges. We had nothing to
lose. We stepped out there today
and played a great game and de-
served to win.”
This was the 34-year-old Sere-
na’s second match of the day: The
22-time major singles champion
won her first-rounder in that event
earlier Sunday. The 36-year-old
Venus, meanwhile, now has two
first-round exits at the Rio Olym-
pics, because she was beaten in
singles on Saturday night.
After that defeat, Venus did
not meet with reporters, but U.S.
women’s Olympic tennis coach
Mary Joe Fernandez said that the
seven-time major singles cham-
pion had been sick since before
she arrived in Brazil. Fernandez
also said Venus was dealing with
cramping, dehydration and an up-
set stomach after Saturday’s loss.
In the doubles, played under
the lights, when occasional chants
of “USA!” would rise from some
C ontinued on P age 14
Little League World Series
Alpenrose Dairy Hosts youth softball players
play Portland for 23rd consecutive time
Beginning August 9, young
softball players will travel to
Portland from around the world
to play the Little League Softball
World Series, hosted again by Al-
penrose Dairy.
There are 31 games in the se-
ries featuring four world teams
from Africa/Europe, Latin Ameri-
ca, Asia Pacific and Canada, with
the United States represented by
the East, West, Southwest, South-
east, Central, and Oregon District
4 teams.
An opening ceremony will
be held on August 9 with games
beginning on August 10 and run-
ning through the August 17 World
Championship. There will be 4-5
games each day taking place be-
tween 10:00 a.m. and 7:00 p.m.,
with a few games on the 16th and
17th broadcasting on ESPN 2.
Admission to the Little League
Softball World Series is free and
held on the Alpenrose Dairy prem-
ises, located at 6149 Southwest
Shattuck Road.