Russian tennis players Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider give AIN a shot at gold in women's doubles

PARIS (AP) — Russian players Mirra Andreeva and Diana Shnaider gave the group competing as Individual Neutral Athletes, known by the French acronym AIN, a chance of a tennis 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 one season of college tennis at North Carolina State, 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.

“We’re going to do everything possible to win,” Andreeva said. “It’s a great, great feeling, because we know we’re going to bring home a medal, anyway. Of course, it would be amazing if we would be able to bring home a gold medal.”

Andreeva and Shnaider, who were holding celebratory ice cream cones while being interviewed, are wearing all-white uniforms, with none of the flags or other markings used by other tennis players at the Olympics. Shnaider said her outfit is the one she used last month at Wimbledon, which has a policy mandating white clothing.

They now know they’ll leave France with no worse than a silver medal. They will face Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini of Italy in the final on Sunday.

“We’re very excited,” Shnaider said. “We’re going to go for it.”

On Friday, Ivan Litvinovich and Viyaleta Bardzilouskaya, both of Belarus, won the first medals by AIN athletes at the Paris Olympics, both in trampoline. Litvinovich claimed gold for the men, and Bardzilouskaya got the women’s silver.

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Shnaider, whose family lives in Moscow, and Andreeva, whose training base is in Cannes, France, 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 their country 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.

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Associated Press Writer Tom Nouvian contributed to this report.

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