Tennis: Kukushkin, Voskoboyeva and Shvedova will take part in London Olympic Games

Three Kazakhstan tennis professionals: Mikhail Kukushkin, Galina Voskobyeva and Yaroslava Shvedova have made it into the list of participants of the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games. The list of participants was recently publicized by the International Tennis Federation (ITF), Tengrinews.kz reports, citing Vesti.kz. Yaroslava Shvedova paired with Galina Voskoboyeva will represent Kazakhstan in the Women’s Doubles. No Kazakhstan tennis professionals have qualified for the Men’s Doubles Olympics. The current champions of the Games will also participate in the London Olympics. Spanish Rafael Nadal (Men’s Singles), Swiss Roger Federer paired with Stanislav Vavrinka (Men’s Doubles) and American sisters Venus and Serena Williams (Women’s Doubles) will defend their champion titles. Russian Yelena Dementieva, who won gold in the 2008 Olympic Games in women’s singles won’t take part in the tournament because she has already retired. The top professionals of the world tennis ratings (Serbian Novak Djokovic and Russian Maria Sharapova) will also participate at the Olympics. Mixed Doubles tournament will be held in London for the first time since 1924. The pairs of participants for this tournament will be defined from the list of tennis players, who will be taking part in the Singles or Doubles Olympics.