Venus and Serena Williams make history after winning Olympic doubles gold

For the third time in their illustrious careers, the winning Williams sisters, Venus and Serena, hit gold by winning the women’s doubles title at Wimbledon on day 9 of the London 2012 Olympics. The United States was a proud tennis nation, as only a day before Serena had won her first singles gold medal to be on par with her older sister, who won the singles title in 2000 at the Sydney Games.

Surprisingly, the Williams’ were not even seeded for this event. In the first round, they swept past the unseeded Romanian pair of Sorana Cirstea and Simona Halep 6-3 6-2, while in the second round they came up against the fifth seeds from Germany, Anglique Kerber and Sabine Lisicki and again won handily, 6-2 7-5, against a pair of hard hitting up and coming young players. In the quarter final round, they played the second seeds, Roberta Vinci and Sara Errani of Italy, in a much more tight match which went to three sets; with the Americans eventually winning 7-5 4-6 6-4. The semis saw them meet the third seeded Russians, Maria Kirilenko and Nadia Petrova and, yet again, they really had to battle all the way through this extremely close match to secure their place in the final. Their winning score was 7-5 6-7 6-4.

In the final, Serena and Venus played the hard hitting fourth seeded pair from the Czech Republic, Andrea Hlavackova and Lucie Hradecka, who had won their semi final match the previous day against the number one seeds, Liezl Huber and Lisa Raymond of the United States. The final score was 6-4 6-4 in favour of the Americans and mirrored the Wimbledon final these two teams fought for barely a month ago, when the Williams sisters were also victorious.

Tags Andrea Hlavackova Lucie Hradecka Serena Williams venus williams