Puerto Rico has sent athletes to the Summer Olympic Games since 1948. It had never once taken home a gold medal. That is, until Rio 2016. Until Saturday.
Puerto Rican tennis player Monica Puig completed a magical run through the women’s singles tennis tournament with a victory over Germany’s Angelique Kerber in the gold medal match Saturday.
Puig won in three sets, 6-4, 4-6, 6-1. She won the first five games of the third set, and clinched the match by pulling out a back-and-forth tiebreak up 5-1 in the third.
After winning the match point, Puig sunk to the ground, and appeared to be on the verge of tears.
Puig’s victory is a surprise to say the least. She came into the Olympics ranked 34th in the world, and was unseeded in the singles tournament in Rio. She had never won a major title. Kerber was ranked No. 2 in the world.
Puig also upset recent French Open champion Garbine Muguruza on her road to the singles final in Rio. Her other victories came over Slovenia’s Polona Hercog, Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova, Germany’s Laura Siegemund, and the Czech Republic’s Petra Kvitova.
Puerto Rico has a complicated Olympic history, but Puig’s medal is, per official records, its first. It has won eight total medals in its Olympic history – six bronze, two silver. The silvers were won by boxer Luis Ortiz in 1984 and wrestler Jaime Espinal in 2012.
Puig, 22, now lives in Miami, and has competed on the WTA tour, but was born in Puerto Rico to a Puerto Rican mother and Cuban American father.
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