On This Day: Jennifer Capriati Strikes Gold at 1992 Olympics 

WATCH: Capriati stunned Stefanie Graf in three sets to win a gold medal at the Summer Olympic Games in Barcelona.

Jennifer Capriati’s epic career had so many vivid phases: prodigy, exile, champion. Thirty years ago today marked one of the most purely joyful moments of Capriati’s journey to the International Tennis Hall of Fame. She was 16 that summer of 1992, already a well-traveled veteran, in her third year as a pro. Capriati had by then reached three Grand Slam semis and cracked the top ten. But she’d also begun to feel a bit worn out by the demands of life as a highly visible public figure.

So it was that Capriati arrived in Barcelona to play the Olympics. The great news was that in this environment, Capriati was no longer the wunderkind in the fish bowl, but merely one of many athletes. She savored the chance to connect with such stars of the time as Carl Lewis and Matt Biondi. “This has been the most fun I’ve ever had,” she said. “I got to meet all the athletes, take it easy with them in the training room and stuff. It’s neat.” And she also benefitted from a few coaching pointers offered by a family friend, Spanish tennis legend and Hall of Famer, Manuel Santana.

Feeling exceptionally relaxed, Capriati advanced to the semis without the loss of a set, easily imposing her power baseline game on the clay. But to reach the finals she’d have to get past homeland hero Arantxa Sanchez Vicario. Nicknamed “The Barcelona Bumblebee,” Sanchez Vicario had already won Roland Garros once and would surely have the Spanish crowd thoroughly in her corner. The audience that afternoon included King Juan Carlos and Queen Sofia. In the end, though, Capriati beat the second-seeded Sanchez Vicario, 6-3, 3-6, 6-1.

It was so emotional, I got the chills out there. This is unbelievable. I mean, I can’t believe it. The last two weeks, I saw all the other athletes up there on the victory stand and I thought, ‘Wow, that would be so cool.’ Jennifer Capriati after winning gold

Next came an opponent who’d never lost a match at the Olympics. Stefanie Graf had first won the Olympic test event as a 15-year-old at the 1984 Games in Los Angeles. Four years later, tennis an official Olympic sport, Graf took the gold in Seoul. A month prior to Barcelona, Graf had won Wimbledon.

Versus Capriati, Graf won the first set, 6-3. She’d yet to lose a set the entire tournament. But Capriati dug in. Though she’d lost all four of her previous matches versus Graf, she’d always been able to match her in the power department. The bigger challenge was consistency. On this day, though, Capriati was rock-solid—and also able to direct many shots to Graf’s weaker backhand. “Jennifer is one of the very few players who hits hard enough to do that,” said Marty Riessen, the US Olympic women’s team coach. “That kept Steffi from running around and teeing off on her forehand.” As Graf said in a New York Times article about the match, “She was very steady from the baseline and she didn’t give me a lot of errors like she sometimes does.”

Capriati won the second set, 6-3 and continued to play great tennis in the third, closing it out, 6-4. Quoted in the Los Angeles Times, Capriati said, “It was so emotional, I got the chills out there. This is unbelievable. I mean, I can’t believe it. The last two weeks, I saw all the other athletes up there on the victory stand and I thought, ‘Wow, that would be so cool.’”

"It helped me to believe in myself," said Graf on her prior Olympic triumphs. "I'm sure for Jennifer, it's going to help her a lot, even more."

It took a while, though. A worn-out Capriati left the tour just over a year later. She’d spend a good part of the ‘90s competing only intermittently. But by the start a new century, Capriati had regained her enthusiasm for tennis, in 2001 earning the world number one ranking. As she said that year, “I feel as if I’ve been reincarnated.” Perhaps a few of the seeds for that rebirth were planted in Barcelona.