Shooter Andrija Zlatic won the first decoration for Serbia at the Olympic Games in London – bronze medal. Water polo selection and tennis players Novak Djokovic and Janko Tipsarevic have had victorious starts, as well as Ana Ivanovic among women, while Jelena Jankovic and Viktor Troicki were defeated in the first round already. Both volleyball selections also lost their first matches, but the men’s handball team offered great performance in the first half-time against Spain, but ruined the impression later and lost the game. Other Serbian Olympians have achieved solid results. Igor Dejanovic has more in the Olympic Roundup.
On the first day of the Olympics Games in London, Serbia earned its first medal. In final of the shooting competition, in the air pistol 10m event Andrija Zlatic won the bronze. The gold medal was taken by Korean competitor Jin Jongoh, and silver by Italian Luca Tesconi. IN women’s competition, our Zorana Arunovic placed 7th in the air pistol, 10m event. The medals in this event were won by Wenjun Guo from China, Celine Goberville from France and Olena Kostevych from Ukraine.
Best Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic was successful in overcoming the first obstacle – Italian player Fabio Fognini, with the result 2:1. In the next round of the Olympic tournament, Djokovic will play against the winner of the duel between American Andy Roddick and Slovak Martin Klizan. Another Serbian representative has qualified for the second round – Janko Tipsarevic has eliminated Argentinean David Nalbandian with the result 2:0. In the next round, our player will meet Austrian Phillip Petzschner. Two remaining Serbian representatives in the singles competition – Jelena Jankovic lost to Serena Williams with 2:0, and in men’s competition Viktor Troicki was defeated by Nicolas Almagro, also 2:0.
The best impression of all Serbian Olympians was left by the water polo team. The opened the tournament brilliantly and defeated in the first duel their big rivals Hungary with the result 14:10. Except in the first period, which ended 2:2, in the remainder of the match Serbia outclassed the opponents in all segments. The best scorer in the Serbian team was Prlainovic with 5 goals. In the next round, our selection will play against the host team of Great Britain.
Both volleyball selections had unsuccessful start in the Olympic Games. Men’s team lost convincingly to USA – 3:0. Our team will play the next match on Tuesday, against Tunisia. Women’s selection was also defeated, after the weak performance against China. In the end, the Chinese girls triumphed with 3:1. Our team will play next against the South Korea.
Among all matches of Serbian athletes in London, most exciting was the duel of our handball selection against Spain. The Serbian team opened the match very well, and at the end of the first half-time they had the four goal lead. However, in the middle of the second period, they had the inexplicable deterioration in performance, which was punished by Spain with several goals scored on counter attacks. In the end, the Spanish accomplished a triumph with the result 26:21. For the Serbian team, the next match will be against Croatia.
Among other sports, significant is the result of the Serbian swimming relay in the event 4x100m freestyle, with the new national record. Unfortunately, it was not enough to qualify for the final race. Milorad Cavic, Velimir Stjepanovic, Ivan Lendjer and Radovan Siljevski achieved the result 3:18.79, which is by more than three seconds better than the time they had when coming to London. However, in the competition of top 16 relays, the Serbian crew placed 13th, thus failing to qualify for the final.
In rowing competition, Serbian unpiloted two-seat crew of Nikola Stojic and Nenad Bedjik has qualified for the final 2,000m race. They qualified for the event by taking the second place in the repechage, with the time 6:26.61.
Serbian representatives have ended their participation in the table tennis singles competition. Aleksandar Karakasevic was defeated in the second round, after being free in the first. He lost to Hungarian player Daniel Zwikl with 4:1. That way, Serbia has been left without representatives in this sport, since Marko Jevtovic was eliminated earlier.
To conclude this sports roundup, we have a piece of news non-related to the Olympic Games. At the European Basketball Championship in Lithuania for players under 16 years of age, the Serbian selection won the bronze medal, after being victorious over Italy with the result 83:69.