Puig nails Puerto Rico’s first-ever gold
RIO DE JANEIRO—The spectators told Monica Puig they believed she could win Puerto Rico’s first Olympic gold medal in any sport, providing a soundtrack of “Si se puede!”—“Yes, we can!”—during the Rio de Janeiro Games women’s tennis final. She could. And she did. The unseeded and unheralded Puig capped her run of upsets with the biggest one of all Saturday, overpowering No. 2 Angelique Kerber of Germany, 6-4, 4-6, 6-1, to become the Olympic champion.
“I did hear everybody saying, “Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can!’ I kept repeating it inside myself: ‘ Yes, I can! Yes, I can! Yes, I can!”’ Puig said.
Puig’s father told her he believed, too, e-mailing the lyrics to the Puerto Rican national anthem a day earlier, just in case they would come in handy.
And so, as the strains of that song echoed around an Olympic arena for the first time, and Puerto Rico’s red-white-and- blue flag was raised to the highest level during amedal ceremony for the first time, Puig remembered what Dad had written.
A 22-year-old born in San Juan, Puerto Rico, and now based in Florida, Puig is also the first woman representing her country to earn a medal of any color.
Gigi Fernandez, who is Puerto Rican, won two Olympic women’s doubles gold medals in tennis, but did so while representing the United States.
In Sunday’s men’s final, defending champion Andy Murray of Britain, try- ing to become the first player to win two Olympic singles golds, faces Juan Martin del Potro of Argentina.
Venus Williams, meanwhile, can become the first tennis player with five career Olympic golds, pairing with Rajeev Ram against Bethanie Mattek-Sands and Jack Sock in an all-American mixed doubles final.
The women’s doubles gold will go to either Martina Hingis and Timea Bacsinszky of Switzerland or Ekaterina Makarova and Elena Vesnina of Russia.