Tennis – Caroline Garcia on a home Games at the Paris 2024 Olympics, her podcast and more

On Paris 2024: ‘I want to go all the way’

Paris will be a third Olympic experience for Garcia, but she’d like it to be an entirely new one, having won just one of her previous six matches across singles, doubles and mixed doubles at Rio 2016 and Tokyo 2020 in 2021.

“The first two on the experience scale, they are all at the bottom,” she said, laughing about it now. “I want to go all the way and get a medal.”

While Garcia isn’t sure yet what events she will play, she said what is actually most important to her draws back to her Antartica trip and the podcast: A changed perspective in 2024.

“I want to live the experience, to give my all, to say to myself at the end of the Olympiad: ‘I gave everything, I did my best,'” she said. “[If] I win a medal, great! Or… I did not win a medal, but I had a good time and I have a lifelong memory that I will tell my children, my grandchildren.”

Garcia and fellow Frenchwoman Kristina Mladenovic are top doubles performers and have captured two majors, both of them coming at the home major, at Roland-Garros in 2016 and again in 2022. The crowded one-week calendar makes commitment to multiple events complicated for tennis players, Garcia confirmed, though she is especially excited for a home Games.

“I can’t wait to find out how the atmosphere will be, to find Roland-Garros again with the Olympic Games organisation,” she said. “We already know the place, the place. … so, in terms of practicality, it will be incredible and we are really lucky to have this opportunity.”

Garcia has already eyed the long-range planning with her team, with the French Open quickly followed by the grasscourt season in the lead-up to Wimbledon, and then a flip back to the clay for the Games in late July.

“We will return to Roland-Garros under 35-degree heat,” she said. “It’s a very, very dense week with a lot of positive emotions and also a little bit of negative stress. So the aim is still to arrive fresh for the Olympics.”