5:42
The Best Never
These words will now follow Elena Dementieva into eternity; they may even end up on her tombstone. Should she be in the Hall of Fame? Is she really the “best never”? We’ve got time to answer those questions. For the moment I’ll try to remember the Russian for the time when she did win big, at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. You can see the last game of her gold-medal-round win over Dinara Safina in the clip above. I’d forgotten all the points and the shots, but I remembered the screech she let out when it was over—Dementieva was temporarily overcome by joy and, even more, shock. As a Russian, the Olympics must have meant as much to her as any major could. So maybe in the future we should make sure we say “Olympic gold medalist” before we get to the “best player never to …” part. She was too good to be remembered for a negative.
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