Little-known Puerto Rican who became an Olympic legend

Dubai - Little-known racquet-wielder from Puerto Rico wrote an epic of her own in Rio

Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Simone Biles. These are the names that reverberated around Rio for those two glorious weeks of Summer Olympics last year.
They are once-in-a-generation athletes whose jaw-dropping brilliance left journalists around the world searching desperately for new adjectives.
It's highly unlikely that Monica Puig would ever find herself in a pantheon where the legends of Bolt, Phelps and Biles reside.
But the little-known racquet-wielder from Puerto Rico wrote an epic of her own in Rio.
Puig was not seeded when she came to the Rio Games. But the 22-year-old player left Brazil as the only unseeded gold medallist in the history of Olympic tennis.
Before her stunning win, nobody from her country had known how it felt to wear an Olympic gold medal.
Tears rolled down her cheeks as they began playing Puerto Rico's national anthem on that surreal night. Only when she crossed the finish line, did she realise the kind of obstacles she overcame to complete that fairytale win.
Fourteenth-seed Russian Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova was Puig's second round victim. French Open champion Garbine Muguruza was sent packing in the third round.
Two-time Wimbledon champion Petra Kvitova was stunned in the semifinals. Then in the final, Puig sucked the life out of Angelique Kerber, ending the world number two's hopes of joining a select group of players to win an Olympic gold and a Grand Slam in the same year.
Life, naturally, has never been the same again for Puig.
"It (the medal) is not on display yet, you know, but I like to look at it a lot. It gives me goosebumps. It was such a beautiful moment for me. It's always nice to go back and remember," said Puig after completing a tough 6-3 4-6 6-4 win over Yaroslava Shvedova of Kazakhstan in the first round of the Dubai Duty Free Tennis Championships on Monday.
"The medal is home in a safe place. You know, it's always nice to reflect on that and just know that it wasn't a dream!"
Such were the emotions that Puig even forgot the lines of her national anthem at the medals ceremony in Rio.
"I think if a moment like that comes again, I'm going to forget every single word and I'm just going to start bawling. I have heard it several times since, especially in the exhibition, the Monica Puig Invitational that I had," she smiled.
"I promised myself that I wasn't going to cry. I was, like, I'm not going to cry, I'm not going to cry, and I started crying mid-anthem. I was, like, No. I was, like, I have to play a match. I can't be crying.
"But it's just so beautiful, and I'm really proud to be Puerto Rican. I think as my career goes on I'm just going to continue to represent them as best I can and hopefully represent them in the Olympics in 2020," said the Miami-based player.
Puig, the world number 46, has failed to replicate her Olympic form in the biggest events since then, losing in the first round at the US Open and in the second round at the Australian Open.
Last week she had reasons to smile in Doha where she reached the semifinals.
"You know, it was a great week for me in Rio, and it was really good, but the fact of the matter is I didn't back it up afterward," she admitted.
"So, you know, right now I'm just trying to get back to feeling comfortable, playing at that level consistently. And, you know, right now I'm doing a great job, I think. I'm working really hard.
"I'm giving my 100% in tennis, and I'm just focused on this right now. This is consuming my whole life.
"I just really want this really bad. So I'm going to do whatever it takes. If that's training more, if that's, you know, fixing the little things, it doesn't matter for me. I really love what I do and I really love playing tennis. I'm just going to work really hard to accomplish some more of my dreams."
rituraj@khaleejtimes.com