PARIS: Zheng Qinwen ended Iga Svitek's 25-match unbeaten run at Roland Garros on Thursday to become the first Chinese player to reach an Olympic singles final as Carlos Alcaraz edged closer to a challenge with Novak Djokovic.
But the defending champion, Alexander Zverev, lost to Italy's Lorenzo Musetti in the quarterfinals.
Seventh-seeded Zheng beat world number one Svitek 6-2, 7-5 and will face Croatia's Donna Vecic or Slovakia's Anna Karolina Smidelova in the gold medal match. To describe how I feel,” said Zheng, who played three hours of back-to-back matches to reach the semifinals.
“If you ask me to play three more hours for my country, I will. It was a wonderful game. It is not easy to beat Iga.
Swietek, a four-time French Open champion at Roland Garros who has not lost in Paris since 2021, went into the match on a court facing Philippe Chatrier.
The 23-year-old player had defeated Zheng in all six previous meetings.
However, the strong 21-year-old reached the final of the Australian Open, breaking the pole three times in the opening set.
Switek appeared to recover from a 10-minute break and quickly raced to a 4-0 lead in the second set before Zheng came back to break both to make it 4-4.
The Chinese star broke again for a 6-5 lead against an error-plagued Switek and won the next game.
By reaching the final, Zheng became the first Chinese man or woman to reach the Olympic singles gold medal match, surpassing the run of Li Na, who finished fourth at the women's event in Beijing in 2008.
Li Ting and Sun Tiantian won China's only Olympic tennis gold in women's doubles in Athens in 2004.
Alcaraz, returning to Roland Garros where he won his first French Open in June, became the youngest Olympic semifinalist since Djokovic in 2008.
The second seed survived a break down in the second set to defeat 13th seed Tommy Paul of the US 6-3, 7-6 (9/7) and saved a set point in the tiebreak.
“It's all about the fight,” said Alcaraz, who was playing the day after he and Rafael Nadal suffered a heartbreaking doubles loss in what was likely the veteran's final appearance at Roland Garros.
The 21-year-old will face Casper Rudd or Felix Auger-Aliassime for a place in the final.
Mussetti, who reached the Wimbledon semi-finals, beat Zverev 7-5, 7-5 as the 16th-ranked Italian continued his run at the Olympics.
The 22-year-old was playing in the Tour Finals in Umag, Croatia on Saturday night and arrived in Paris on Sunday morning just hours before his first round clash.
After becoming the first Italian player to reach the singles semi-finals since the return of tennis at the Olympics in Seoul in 1988, Musetti entered the semi-finals without dropping a set.
The Italian will face top-seeded Djokovic, who beat him in the Wimbledon semifinals, or Stefanos Tsitsipas for a place in the gold medal match.
Djokovic, still chasing the elusive Olympic gold medal to add to his 24 Grand Slam titles, plays Tsitsipas on the same court where he came from two sets down to defeat the Greek in the French Open final in 2021.
The Serb has made it through the first three rounds in Paris and will be buoyed by his 11-2 head-to-head record against Tsitsipas.
That run also included a win in the 2023 Australian Open final while Tsitsipas' last win over Djokovic came back in 2019.
Paul will return to the court later on Thursday when he teams up with Taylor Fritz in the men's doubles quarter-finals in what could be the end of Andy Murray's career.
Murray and Dan Evans will face the US third seeds for a place in the semi-finals.
Former world number one and three-time Grand Slam singles champion Murray has announced his intention to retire after the Olympics.
The 37-year-old and Evans have had a roller-coaster Olympics so far, saving seven match points in two rounds.
