Eleni Daniilidou is hoping she can beat the same kind of odds Greece's national soccer team did at the recent European Championships: 100 to 1.
Ranked 36th in the world, the Greek tennis player is the country's lone tennis medal hope. The host nation is counting on the 21-year-old Daniilidou to give Greece its first medal in the sport in over a century.
PHOTO: REUTERS
"My aim is to reach the singles quarterfinals, something I consider to be hard because in this tournament it will be all top players," said Daniilidou.
PHOTO: AFP
The odds are against her.
The nation has never won an Olympic gold medal in the sport. The last Greek tennis player to reach the final was Dionysios Kasdaglis, who finished runner-up at the first modern Olympics in 1896, the last time the games were held in Athens.
The Greeks have recently demonstrated they can overcome even the most incredible odds.
Aside from finishing construction of the venues in time for these Olympic games -- after years of delays -- the nation produced one of the biggest upsets in soccer history in June.
The national team, which had never won a game in a major soccer tournament before arriving in Portugal, overcame 100-1 odds to march over the favorites and collect the prestigious Euro 2004 trophy.
Now, at the world's biggest sporting event, Daniilidou will similarly need to vanquish some of the greatest names in women's tennis.
Beginning Sunday, the Greek player will have to fight through a tough field that includes top-seeded Justine Henin-Hardenne, on-form world No. 2 Amelie Mauresmo of France and defending champion Venus Williams on the way to the semifinals.
"It's normal that Greek people expect a lot from Eleni as she's considered a world-class player," said Judith Sprenger, Daniilidou's coach. "Especially now that she's playing at home, in such a big event, expectations are even higher.
The Greek player will face Hungary's Aniko Kapros in the opening round.
Daniilidou has been given another chance for a medal, receiving a wild card for the women's doubles event with Christina Zachariadou.
Daniilidou, the best player that Greece has produced, hit No. 14 in the WTA rankings last year. The serve-and-volleyer won her third WTA title in Auckland earlier this year.
"She played good tennis this year but she was often unlucky with the draw," said Sprenger. "In early rounds, she had to compete against top players like Serena Williams and Amelie Mauresmo."
Ranked 142nd in June 2001, the Greek player vaulted into 32nd position within a year.
A native of Chania, Crete, Daniilidou became the first woman to reach the fourth round at Wimbledon in 2002 and cracked the top 20 by January 2003. A month later, she was in 16th place.
After witnessing her triumph at the ASB Classic in Auckland in 2003, Australian doubles champion Todd Woodbridge asked her to team with him at the following Open in Melbourne.
The pair lost in the final. In singles play at the same event, Daniilidou reached the fourth round before losing to Serena Williams, giving Greece its best finish at the tournament.
Martina Navratilova gets advice from teammates about Olympic pin-collecting, offering plenty of enthusiasm in exchange, and just can't wait to get out and play on the blue tennis courts.
To all those who think of Navratilova as a been-there, done-that legend of the game, owner of 18 Grand Slam titles in singles and more than three dozen others in doubles, remember this:
She might be 47, but Navratilova is an Olympic rookie.
"I'm loving being on the court. That's the most important thing. The idea is to feel the way you did when you were 5, 6, 7 years old, playing tennis," she said Thursday.
"You played because you wanted to play, because you loved it, because it was fun. And it's still that same idea -- I want to stay as close to that feeling as possible."
On a farewell tour of sorts before retiring for good at the end of the year, Navratilova is playing doubles with Lisa Raymond. The Olympic tournament begins Sunday, and the Americans were drawn Thursday to face wild-card entries Yulia Beygelzimer and Tetyana Perebiynis of Ukraine in the first round.
The other US women's doubles team, Venus Williams and Chanda Rubin, start off against No. 8-seeded Li Ting and Sun Tian-tian of China. In singles, No. 6 Williams plays Melinda Czink of Hungary, No. 16 Rubin plays Samantha Stosur of Australia, and Raymond plays Lubomira Kurhajcova of Slovakia.
The players could be excused for being deflated by the late withdrawals of Williams' sister, Serena, and Jennifer Capriati, but Navratilova keeps everyone motivated. Part of her excitement stems from representing her adopted country -- Navratilova defected from Czechoslovakia when she was 18.
"I've had the opportunity to coach Martina, be around Martina, be Martina's friend, play against Martina, but the thing that I love about her is that she's been a great team person," US coach Zina Garrison said.
"Her enthusiasm is unbelievable. Martina gets all of us going early in the morning," Garrison continued, sitting a few feet from the woman she lost to in the 1990 Wimbledon final. "It's always good to have someone -- excuse me, Martina, but -- at her age, come out and still be enthusiastic to play."
Win or lose, Navratilova clearly is here to have fun. Indeed, she has said repeatedly that she returned to Fed Cup play after nearly a decade's absence precisely so she would be eligible to play at the Athens Games.
And she's soaking up every minute, meeting athletes from all sorts of sports and countries, figuring out what competition she wants to go to as a spectator -- and engaging in a popular Olympic pursuit: swapping pins.
Venus Williams, a gold medalist in singles and doubles at Sydney four years ago, has been coaching Navratilova in the latter.
"I learned from Venus. There are a lot of people who want your picture or an autograph, so you say, `OK, give me a pin, I'll take a picture,'" Navratilova said.
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