Svetlana Lozano. If I can’t have her I’ll settle for somebody who can. I’ve always felt there’s no way an athlete could win a gold medal in athletics who doesn’t have a natural talent.

As a person, you can see I don’t have that. There aren’t many of my kind in tennis.

If you do win a gold medal here, it would be one of the hardest moments — if not the most.

Lenzano will play in the semifinal, against Garbine Muguruza of Serbia, with a gold medal on the line. And she’s already got a strong claim on the gold.

I don’t feel like the pressure is there, I don’t think about it. I get up and I think, I want to win the gold medal. I’ve come and trained myself all week to be ready to go. It feels great to be around the people, my teammates and the coaches. I’m very excited to play as a single mom.

Do you think it will affect the decision to give up the gold medal?

When you’re a single mom with two kids, every game makes the decision easier. Even if this is not my best performance at the Olympics, I don’t want it to be. This has been my dream for 10 years, my dream to play at the big competition. And at any cost, I have to show I’m a good tennis player and I try my best. I want to win the gold at all costs, I don’t necessarily want to lose. Maybe the team’s mentality and belief in you comes into play.

Does it affect how you think about the match?

I know that if I come in third, it will hurt at the team but on a personal level I have to give the gold medal to Garbine. I have won two Grand Slams, I have a lot of momentum going in my career. At the end of the day nobody else has played well and I think winning a gold medal at the biggest tournament of my life will help me take it farther ahead.

What happens if, in the semifinal, you beat someone like Rani, who’s an outstanding tennis player but is only 17 years old?

That is what I have to go through because we have a great team and we’ve been together for two years now. If the other team is dominating