Federer, Williams sisters stay in medal hunt
Federer, Williams sisters stay in medal hunt
The Swiss kept his Olympic medal hopes alive with a doubles win over Paes and Bhupathi.

Beijing: Roger Federer kept his Olympic medal hopes alive with a doubles win over India's Mahesh Bhupathi and Leander Paes on Friday.

The singles top seed, shocked in the individual competition late on Thursday, teamed up with world No. 10 Stanislas Wawrinka for a 6-2, 6-4 quarter-final win.

Venus and Serena Williams, who also crashed out of the singles, beat Japan's Ayumi Morita and Ai Sugiyama 7-5, 6-2 in the women's doubles second round.

Both matches started late on Thursday but were called off because of rain.

"It was sweet revenge because I lost to them with Yves Allegro four years ago in Athens," Federer said.

"We expected them to be tougher, but in a best-out-of-three-set doubles match anything can happen."

The Swiss pair face a difficult semi-final against top-seeded American twins Bob and Mike Bryan late on Friday.

"The next match will be tough for us," Wawrinka said. "I think we need to be focused and play like we did today."

France's Arnaut Clement and Michael Llodra play Simon Aspelin and Thomas Johansson of Sweden in the other men's semi-final.

Twelve-time Grand Slam champion Federer has never won an Olympic medal but finished fourth in the 2000 singles.

Bhupathi had earlier hit out at the policy of allowing players to use their individual ranking to calculate the Olympic doubles seedings, saying singles specialists did not "deserve" such consideration.

"It's the first time I've seen this happen. I don't know what the agenda with the ITF (International Tennis Federation) is but I think it's pretty unfortunate that they're doing that," he has said.

Bhupathi and Paes teamed up for the Olympics despite a bitter personal feud. They won three Grand Slam doubles titles in 1999 before parting a year later.

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