And the duo’s match wasn’t just tense off the court, as during the competition a strong backhand from Collins hit Swiatek in the stomach, causing the 23-year-old—who is currently the top-seeded woman at the Olympic Games—to clutch her midsection and fall to the floor before quickly recovering.
“I couldn’t breathe for some time,” Swiatek explained to reporters about the hit. “I guess with the adrenaline that you have on court, you don’t feel these kind of things too hard. So I could get back in the game really quickly.”
As for Collins, her decision to end the game was due to injury in her abdominal muscles, saying that the heat in Paris has “been brutal.”
“When you have full-body cramps from your toes to your neck and you suffer a heat stroke,” she said, “it’s very, very difficult to come out here.”
