If you don’t like to party stay away from the beach volleyball
Last night I got to experience beach volleyball Olympic style. It is a real party atmosphere and has changed a lot from the days when I played.
Every moment that the players are not in action there is a party song pumping out of the sound system. Any break in play you get to see the dancing girls strut their stuff. Even in the hey days of the AVP tour in the USA you did not get all this.
Some might say it is a bit over the top, others love it. The main event is watching the beach volleyball and there was plenty of action on the courts last night.
In the first match the Brazilian pairing of Marcio Araujo/Fabio Luiz took on Florian Gosch and Alexander Horst. The first set was tight and could have gone either way when the score was 20-20. It was however the more experiend Brazilians who took the set 22-20.
In the second set the Brazilians always held a slight advantage and they were able to use that to win the second set and a spot in the semi-finals as they completed a 22-20, 21-17 win. The Austrian’s had chances to win and played well.
In the second match the stadium came alive. It was the traditional showdown between the US and Brazil. The 2004 gold medal winners from the Athens games, Ricardo Santos and Emanuel Rego faced off against Sean Rosenthal and Jacob Gibb.
Gibb is just over 2 metres tall and put up some pretty big blocks for his Brazilian opponents to hit past. The shorter Brazilian’s also did pretty well in the blocking department and the crowd witnessed some huge blocks and huge spikes. Throw in some great defence and we had a great match.
The strong USA-Brazil following in the crowd added to the atmosphere. The US team pushed the defending champions in the first set and were at one stage just 18-17 down. Ricardo and Emanuel were able to hold it together and claimed the first set 21-18.
In the second set the Brazilian team slowly edged away from the USA team despite several errors coming in their play. Santos missed quite a few serves and sent some spikes long or wide by large margins. To counter this he also came up with many crucial blocks and good digs.
The match was taken 21-18, 21-16 by the big time Brazilian players. They are looking good to defend the gold medal.
One semifinal is an all Brazilian affair with the winners from the above matches meeting each other. In the other semi the USA’s Rogers/Dalhausser meet the surprise semifinalist’s of Geor/Gia from Georgia.
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