After world No. 1 tennis player Novak Djokovic of Serbia withdrew due to injury, Ash Barty and J. Peers of Australia won the bronze medal in the mixed doubles event at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics.
J. Peers Olympic Games Tokyo 2020: Australia Won the Bronze
Expected to face Djokovic and Nina Stojanovic on Saturday night was the team of Barty and J. Peers. However, after losing in three sets to Pablo Carreo Busta for bronze in the men’s singles event, Djokovic pulled out of the competition, citing a left shoulder injury as the reason.
The opportunity is “a dream come true for John and myself,” Barty said. Our goal is to represent our country and bring home a medal. It’s amazing that he may now add a bronze medal to Australia’s collection.
This is something we both worked hard for,” the Wimbledon winner continued. It’s amazing to be able to bring a medal home for our country after all the hard work we put in to get here. We played great tennis all week.
Neither of the Australians would have expected the bronze medal match to end in a walkover, but Djokovic said he had no choice.
On Friday, Barty and J. Peers were one match point away from advancing to the gold medal match, but they lost to Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova and Andrey Rublev of the ROC 5-7, 6-4, [13-11].
In April 2017, J. Peers attained his highest ever position of No.2 in the FedEx ATP Doubles Rankings. He has now won 24 ATP Tour titles, including the ATP Masters 1000 tournaments in Toronto, Shanghai, and Paris.
At first, Ash Barty and J. Peers didn’t believe the news, but what they initially thought was a joke soon became reality when Novak Djokovic shockingly withdrew from their bronze medal match at the last minute.
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Last Words
Unfortunately, Djokovic was unable to join Nina Stojanovic on court for the highly anticipated matchup between the two top-ranked players in the world.
In his match for the bronze medal, which he lost against Pablo Carreno Busta of Spain in straight sets (6-4, 6-7, 6-3), Djokovic spent nearly three hours on court before the start of the match.
