PARIS (AP) — Russian tennis players Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider gave the group competing as Individual Neutral Athletes, known by the French acronym AIN, a chance at its first gold medal at the Paris Olympics by winning Friday to reach the women’s doubles final.
Andreeva, who is 17, and Shnaider, a 20-year-old who played college tennis at North Carolina State after moving to the United States, beat the eighth-seeded team of Cristina Bucsa and Sara Sorribes Tormo of Spain 6-1, 6-2 in the semifinals.
Russia and Belarus were banned by the International Olympic Committee from team sports at the Paris Games because of the war in Ukraine that began in February 2022. Individual athletes with Russian or Belarusian passports were allowed to compete as neutrals if they qualified and then were approved for entry to the Olympics.
Andreeva and Shnaider — who are wearing all-white uniforms, with none of the flags or other markings used by other tennis players at the Olympics — can do no worse than a silver medal. They will face Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini of Italy in the final.
Earlier Friday, gymnast Viyaleta Bardzilouskaya of Belarus won the first medal by an AIN athlete at these Olympics, getting a silver in women’s trampoline.
Andreeva and Shnaider eliminated the second-seeded pairing of Katerina Siniakova and Barbora Krejcikova of the Czech Republic — the Tokyo Olympics champions — in the quarterfinals.
After that win, the Russians were asked how it felt not to be able to represent Russia at the Olympics.
“For me, it does not matter. I just go out there and play,” Andreeva said. “It just doesn’t matter what is happening outside of tennis.”
Andreeva reached her first Grand Slam singles semifinal at the French Open in June. That tournament is played at the same Roland Garros clay-court facility being used for tennis during the Paris Games.
Associated Press writer Tom Nouvian contributed to this report.