Puig powers Puerto Rico

THE spectators told Monica Puig they believed she could win Puerto Rico’s first Olympic gold medal in any sport, providing a soundtrack of “Si se puede!” — “Yes, we can!” — during the Rio de Janeiro Games women’s tennis final.

She could. And she did.

The unseeded and unheralded Puig capped her run of upsets with the biggest one of all on Saturday, overpowering No. 2 Angelique Kerber of Germany 6-4, 4-6, 6-1 to become the Olympic champion.

“I did hear everybody saying, “Yes, you can! Yes, you can! Yes, you can!’ I kept repeating it inside myself: ‘Yes, I can! Yes, I can! Yes, I can!’” Puig said. “They really helped me believe and just showed me they were there for me, whether I was going to win or lose.”

Puig’s father told her he believed, too, emailing the lyrics to the Puerto Rican national anthem a day earlier, just in case they would come in handy.

And so, as the strains of that song echoed around an Olympic arena for the first time, and Puerto Rico’s red-white-and-blue flag was raised to the highest level during a medal ceremony for the first time, Puig remembered what Dad had written.

She recognized plenty of the words as fans belted them out. She just couldn’t join in the joyous chorus, for a simple reason: too many tears.

“If I would’ve stopped crying, I probably would have started singing,” Puig said afterward, smiling at the thought. “But I couldn’t. I was choking up.”

A 22-year-old born in San Juan and now based in Florida, Puig is also the first woman representing her country to earn a medal of any color.

Gigi Fernandez, a Puerto Rican, won two Olympic women’s doubles golds in tennis, but was representing the US.

Gold medalist Monica Puig of Puerto Rico reacts on the podium on Saturday. — AFP

Puig powers Puerto Rico