From Asian Games to Olympics: Zheng's golden trajectory continues

Qinwen Zheng has added to her Asian Games triumph with the Olympic Games after easing past Donna Vekic 6-2, 6-3 on Saturday afternoon.

Zheng who is affectionally known as 'Queenwen' was crowned as the queen of Paris with a gold medal in the biggest achievement of her rising career thus far. It also saw her back up her incredible win over Iga Swiatek to reach the final.

This saw the Chinese ace overturn a 6-0 Head to Head deficit to steam past a player who she has often troubled but never defeated. But Vekic proved to be a simpler task today as she sealed the gold medal.

She takes over the mantle from a certain Belinda Bencic and prior to that Monica Puig. Two players who perhaps were not expected to seal gold. Qinwen Zheng though has always been seen as a real dark horse and reach a Grand Slam final in January so perhaps is the first winner for a few Olympic cycles that is not a massive shock.

Perhaps the main shock though came with Iga Swiatek not being crowned as champion. It was a match that at times was a long and arduous affair. Both sets lasted nearly an hour despite Qinwen winning both fairly comfortably. She flew into a 2-0 lead in the opening set and consolidated and from there only faced one break point.

But the second set was more back and forth as Qinwen went into a 2-0 lead on her serve but was pegged back to 2-2 by Vekic who aimed to still fight. It was back and forth on serve from there until the nail in the coffin. The Chinese World No.7 broke to make it 5-3 after four break point chances to go one away and she breezed to the title from there.

Crown her Queenwen. Another incredible accolade from China's major tennis star. For Vekic, it will be heartbreaking. But similar to Paolini, it has been a career reviving summer and one that she will look on with fondness as she rejoins the top table of women's tennis.