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| - “You’re the first person to ever win two Olympic tennis gold medals, that’s an extraordinary feat isn’t it?”
John Inverdale, 15 August 2016
“Well, [first] to defend the singles title. I think Venus and Serena [Williams] have won about four each, but hadn’t defended a singles title before.”
Andy Murray, 15 August 2016
Although it is a great achievement to win two Olympic gold medals in any sport, Team GB’s Andy Murray is not the first person ever to do this in tennis. But he is the first person to have won two Olympic golds in the singles.
Ironically, we discovered in the course of researching this article that the official Olympic website has incorrect or missing information on several medallists. We recommend the International Tennis Federation website or the relevant Wikipedia entry instead.
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Andy Murray’s win
Andy Murray first won a gold medal in the men’s singles at the London 2012 Olympics. Yesterday he added another men’s singles gold to his collection with victory in Rio.
By doing this, he became the first person to successfully defend an Olympic singles title and the first man to win back-to-back golds.
Venus and Serena Williams have a lot more than two gold medals
As Mr Murray pointed out, American tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams have won four Olympic gold medals each. Six of these were for their efforts in the women’s doubles. They first won the doubles at Sydney in 2000, before going on to win the gold back-to-back at the Beijing Games in 2008 and again at London 2012.
Venus also won the women’s singles gold medal in 2000 and Serena won it in 2012.
20 people in total have won multiple golds in tennis at the Olympics
Spain’s Rafael Nadal has also won two golds, though in different events. The first was in the men’s singles at Beijing in 2008, the second in the men’s doubles last Friday—two days before Mr Murray’s win.
The same is true of Nicolas Massu who won two golds for Chile at the Athens Olympics in 2004 in the men’s doubles and men’s singles.
Gigi Fernández and Mary Joe Fernández of the USA won back-to-back golds in the women’s doubles at the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics in 1992 and 1996.
That’s a total of seven people who have won multiple tennis gold medals in the modern era.
Looking slightly further back in tennis’s Olympic history, a further 13 achieved this feat when the sport was first on the roster between 1896 and 1924.
Reginald Doherty of the United Kingdom won the men’s and mixed doubles gold medals at the Paris Olympics in 1900. He then won the men’s doubles gold again in 1908.
His brother Hugh Lawrence Doherty won the doubles with him in 1900 and also took the men’s singles gold at the same Olympics. Reginald reportedly pulled out of the semi-final to let his younger brother go through.
Steffi Graf won back-to-back Olympic singles golds, but one wasn’t included in the medals tally
Even when it comes to Olympic gold medals, the answer depends on what you count.
Steffi Graf won back-to-back singles golds for West Germany at the Los Angeles Olympics in 1984 and again in Seoul in 1988. However, in 1984 tennis was only an ‘exhibition sport’ so it wasn't included in the official medal tally.
Rafael Osuna of Spain also won three Olympic golds at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City when tennis was again an exhibition sport. He won two separate golds in men’s doubles and also took the singles title.
Altogether, an extra seven people would be included as multiple gold winners in tennis if their Olympic ‘exhibition’ wins were counted.
Tennis was to return as an official medal sport in 1988 after a 64-year absence from the Olympics, and has been included ever since.
And it’s not just Olympians, Paralympians have won multiple golds too
A number of people have won multiple gold medals in wheelchair tennis at the Paralympics.
Esther Vergeer of the Netherlands holds the record with seven medals. Four of these have been for the women’s singles which she won at every games from 2000 to 2012.
Shingo Kunieda of Japan, Maaike Smit of the Netherlands and David Wagner of the USA have all won three gold medals each. A further seven Paralympians have won two gold medals each at various Paralympics since the sport was first introduced in 1992, including Great Britain’s Peter Norfolk.
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