ITF

52 BARCELONA 1992 MEN'S DOUBLES SILVER WAYNE FERREIRA & PIET NORVAL South Africa W ayne: It was a pretty amazing feeling. South Africa had been banned from the Olympics and it was the first time we had been allowed back, and we were actually the first medal that the country had won, so it was very special in many different ways for us. That political part of it was much bigger than anything else at that time. The semifinal was a very tough match and we were down a lot of it. We were kind of lucky to come out in the end and win that match. I wasn't really thinking about the medal too much at that particular stage because we had already won one, but I think we were very lucky. We had a lot of matches where we could have lost, so everything worked out in our favour. I think the final was a little disappointing. Obviously we weren't expected to win, but we actually did well. We lost in four sets and we lost in a couple of tiebreakers, so it was a very close match. It would have been nice, especially considering who we were playing against [Boris Becker and Michael Stich]. But overall we never expected to win a medal, so we were very happy with the outcome. I never realised that the Olympics would play such a huge part in my results. People really remember that a lot. Obviously the Grand Slams and the Olympics are the ones that stand out for everybody. We were quite naughty in Barcelona. We had this thing called a winger, which was a balloon shooter, and we kept shooting all of the other countries with water balloons. It became quite a spoken-about thing around the Village. Nobody knew where it was coming from and we tried to hide it. I never realised that the Olympics would play such a huge part in my results. P iet: South Africa was in that unique situation where it was its first Olympics in 32 years, so it was actually very unique winning that match because it was our first medal and one of only two in that Olympics, so it was very big in our country back then. Wayne and I, even though we were already one of the best doubles teams in the world, we didn't realise almost that we were doing something very unique for our country because we were active on the tour and playing various tournaments every week, whereas meeting up with the rest of the Olympic team, a lot of them had been isolated from international sport for 32 years. We knew we were good enough to win the final. As a matter of fact, we were almost expecting to win, even though we were playing two great singles players in Becker and Stich. They were two of the best five singles players in the world and they could both play doubles, especially Stich. We played them in doubles before and had beaten them, but it wasn't all about that. Becker and Stich had come through the tougher side of the draw. Wayne and I were very young when we were there. I was 22, Wayne was 20. At that stage it wasn't that emotional to us, we knew it was very big and very special, but because we were so young and we were used to competition at that time, I'll be quite honest, I don't think we realised what we had actually done for the country. We only realised years later the significance of winning South Africa's first Olympic medal in 32 years. I regard it as the most significant achievement of my career. After that achievement, both Wayne and I got a presidential award in South Africa.

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