Donna Vekic became Croatia’s first-ever Olympic singles finalist when she beat Slovakia’s Anna Karolina Schmiedl on Thursday, but she recently considered retiring from tennis altogether.
The 28-year-old, whose career was cut short by knee surgery, was so disillusioned before this year’s French Open that she was close to calling it a day.
Still, she pushed on and reached the semi-finals of Wimbledon last month, losing a marathon match to Jasmine Paolini, and now finds herself on the brink of a gold medal.
During her great run at Wimbledon in July, the 21-year-old Vekic recalled her state of mind before the French Open.
“I wanted to withdraw from the French Open. I wanted to go home. I wanted to take a longer break,” she said.
“I had no energy, no motivation to keep training, to push, because I felt like I had given everything to tennis for the last few months and I wasn’t getting the results I kind of expected.”
At the French Open, she lost in the third round to qualifier Olga Danilovic, but her return to Paris was more successful.
Her progress to the final included defeating second seed Coco Gauff and surviving a three-hour epic against Marta Kostyuk in the quarter-finals in which she twice missed one match point.
She beat Schmiedl 6-4 6-0 and said she was in the zone, although she admitted she felt more nervous than her recent Wimbledon semi-final, which she lost in painful fashion.
“It’s very difficult for me to talk about the match right now because I was so nervous,” she told reporters.
“At times I just wanted to get off the court. I didn’t want to be there. When it’s a medal game it’s different than any other event, I was even more nervous than I was in the Wimbledon semi-finals.”
Vekic admitted she was surprised not to meet world number one Iga Swiatek in the final after the Pole was beaten by China’s Zheng Qinwen.
“When I saw that Iga lost, I was like, ‘Oh, I’d better win my match because it would be tough (on Saturday).’
“But Qinwen is playing great tennis. It will be a tough match.”
