Joe McConnell
In her latest column on Vscek, Laura Robson reflects on her experiences at the Paris Olympics, including watching Mondo Duplantis Enters Pole Vault World Record Books and see Novak Djokovic fall to his knees in tears after completing his career Golden Slam…
I had a great time at the Olympics. It was everything I had hoped for and more, because when you play in the Olympics, you kind of feel disconnected from everything. You just don’t have time to do much else besides your sport, and when you’re done, you leave.
For these Olympics, I was there for two and a half weeks from start to finish and I went everywhere. I literally went to as many venues as I could. I would go back to the hotel in the evening, look at the schedule to see what sports were still on, then go straight to another venue.
The atmosphere was incredible. Even at Roland Garros, it seemed so different and so energetic than what we are used to.
Robson watched Duplantis break his world record for the ninth time
My highlight was the world record in pole vaulting because the atmosphere was electric. I was so obsessed with [Mondo] Duplantis!
I didn’t really know anything about pole vaulting. I went there specifically to see the 800 meters and the British Keely Hodgkinson, then you see all the preparation where the other athletes struggled to reach 5.70 meters and he didn’t even try.
He was like, “I might as well jump that because it’s so easy,” and then the camera panned to him, and he was laying on the floor and just chilling out, and then he jumped another height and made it look like a breeze. It looked like he had enough time to take a selfie up there.
Duplantis does his best impression of Turkish shooter Yusuf Dikec
He won gold half an hour before breaking the world record, but what I loved about it was that by the time we got to his final height there was nothing going on in the stadium. At any given time there are about four events going on, but 75,000 people stayed to watch him jump 6.25m on his third attempt!
It took him about 10 minutes between attempts, so the build-up to this last attempt was just magical. I was like, “Of course it would be on the third attempt” because that was the most incredible moment in Olympic fairy tales. Maybe he planned it, but that was my moment. I’m still on cloud nine from that experience.
Now, I want to be in Los Angeles in 2028: I have to commit myself somehow to make that happen!
A spectacular men’s tennis final…
Novak Djokovic celebrates his victory over Carlos Alcaraz in the men’s singles gold medal final at Roland Garros
It’s amazing how Novak Djokovic and Carlos Alcaraz can play tennis, it meant a lot to both of them.
All that build-up and pressure for Djokovic, knowing that it was something he had never done in tennis and playing so well against someone he had lost to just a couple weeks before. Someone who had just won two Slams, who was having an incredible summer, I found that really inspiring!
His final reaction said it all: he was so motivated to win just this one thing that he had never managed to achieve in tennis.
Djokovic collects Olympic gold medal
I loved the fact that you could see Djokovic and Alcaraz crying all on the same court. There was so much going on, but there were tears of joy and tears of sadness.
That was kind of the theme of the whole week. Everyone who passed through the mixed zone cried at some point.
The 25th Grand Slam doesn’t seem that far away for Novak, but he’s taking a well-deserved break and I think we’ll have to see if he’ll be willing to show up at the US Open…
We know Djokovic can win the US Open!
He reached something that he himself described as the pinnacle of his sporting career, so I think it will be quite difficult to start from scratch after that.
We know he can win! We absolutely know he can do it, but whether he wants to or not at this point, I think that’s the challenge.
How can anything live up to that moment and then see him come home to Serbia and see the reaction he got.
At the end of the day, it’s probably just another US Open, which is an incredible problem to have. It must be pretty hard to go from one to the other.
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