Ulrike Ekeri's dream exploded in the finals: – Great tournament

Ikeri/Gonzalez – Siegmund/Roger Vasselin 7-6, 2-6, 7-10 in super tiebreaker

The Norwegian-Argentine duo, Ulrike Ekeri and Maximo Gonzalez (40 years old), failed to get the final ticket in the mixed doubles.

The duo lost to German Laura Siegmund and Frenchman Edouard Roger-Vasselin in the semi-finals on Wednesday.

– It was a close match, and I think Ulrike played a very good match. She had a great tournament here, and went far in doubles as well, says Discovery tennis expert Dorothea Fau-Hviding.

Ikere himself says it is difficult not to reach the final, but he is still satisfied with his week in Paris.

– It was a very equal match, and we clearly had chances. “It was a lot of good playing and of course it was crazy that we couldn't afford it,” Ekere tells NTB.

– Reaching the semi-finals of a Grand Slam is an incredibly good result, so it was a very good week. And I continue to take that with me.

Ikerri and Gonzalez won the tight first set in the tie-break, but they faced greater difficulties in the second set, which went to the German-French duo with a score of 6-2.

Instead of a third set, a decisive doubles tiebreaker is played to determine the winner. The first duo to obtain 10 points secures a ticket to qualify for the final.

In the deciding tie-break, it was Siegmund and Roger Vasselin who started the better and took a 3-0 lead, before Ikeri and his partner battled back to a 5-5 draw.

After that, Siegmund and Roger Vaslin took the next three points with a score of 8-5, Ikerri and Gonzalez could never recover and finally lost the tie-break 10-7 and were thus eliminated from the tournament.

Ikerri and Gonzalez played just two matches en route to the semifinals. On Tuesday, Japanese Mio Kato and German Timo Butz defeated each other in the quarter-finals.

This was Ikere's second match of the day. Earlier on Tuesday, she and her Estonian partner Ingrid Neill reached the quarterfinals of the women's doubles tournament.

Ikeri reached the mixed doubles final in 2022 with Belgium's Joran Vliegen, but had to see himself defeated by Wesley Koolhoff of the Netherlands and Ina Shibahara of Japan at the time.

It is still unclear whether Ikere will be allowed to participate in the Olympics because she did not find a partner in the doubles tournament.

– In the Olympics, you have to be in the singles or doubles table for the mixed competition. But as it stands now, I don't have a marital partner, Ikere explains and continues:

– Although I would have qualified with Kasper (Rud) in the mixed events, that may not happen, as I do not have a Norwegian doubles partner with whom I can qualify. The situation is a bit uncertain.