PARIS (AP) — Cristina Bucsa and Sara Sorribes Tormo won the women’s tennis doubles bronze medal for Spain at the Paris Olympics — just their second event as a team — by defeating Karolina Muchova and Linda Noskova of the Czech Republic 6-2, 6-2 on Sunday.
Bucsa and Sorribes Tormo earned Spain’s fifth medal in women’s doubles at a Summer Games.
They collected the trophy at the only other tournament they’ve played together, at Madrid in May.
Neither Bucsa nor Sorribes Tormo has won a Grand Slam doubles title.
Later Sunday, in the women’s doubles final, Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider were going for the gold medal as members of the group competing as Individual Neutral Athletes — known by the French acronym AIN — because their country, Russia, was not allowed to have anyone representing it officially at these Olympics amid the war started by its attack on Ukraine.
Andreeva and Shnaider were scheduled to face Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini of Italy.
Muchova and Noskova, who were making their debut as a team, eliminated the top-seeded American duo of Coco Gauff and Jessica Pegula in the second round.
Muchova was the runner-up to No. 1 Iga Swiatek in singles at the 2023 French Open and made it to the semifinals at the U.S. Open before losing to Gauff in a match interrupted for 50 minutes by a climate protest.
Muchova returned to action in June after missing 10 months because of surgery on her right wrist.
The 19-year-old Noskova’s biggest success in singles came at the Australian Open in January, when she reached the quarterfinals after beating Swiatek in the third round. That victory made Noskova the first teenager to beat a No. 1-ranked woman at Melbourne Park since 1999.
