USA Women Victorious Over Netherlands
Day three brought the indoor women back in action and plenty of exciting matches on the beach. Here are the highlights of what was an incredible eventful day at the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Team USA Results
In its second outing in Rio, the U.S. Women’s National Team pulled off a five-set victory in a battle of a match against the Netherlands.
The Netherlands had already proven itself to be a team worth worrying about when it upset China on Saturday. Against the USA, the Dutch women came out firing, winning the first and third sets to go up 2-1.
Shody USA serving and some general inconsistencies, not to mention the Netherlands aggressive, fast-paced offense and formidable blocking, kept the score even throughout much of the match. Only in the fifth set did the USA really pull away, winning 15-7.
The Americans were not at all surprised to see the Netherlands putting up such a fight.
“Volleyball has come enormously far in the Netherlands in the past two years,” USA assistant coach Jamie Morrison said. “The team is up and coming and the support in their country is as well.”
“Maybe people don't know about it but they are a very a good team with a very good coach,” USA head coach Karch Kiraly said. “Jamie was [Netherlands coach Giovanni Guidetti’s] assistant this last year in Turkey on one of the top club teams in the world, VakifBank. So that's not a surprise to us.”
On the beach, Team USA has not fared as well so far today. Austrians Alexander Huber and Robin Seidl upset Casey Patterson and Jake Gibb 21-18, 21-18. The same Austrian duo pushed Spain’s Adrian Gavira and Pablo Herrera to three sets on Saturday. Huber and Seidl are major underdogs, having entered the tournament through the European Continental Cup instead of the FIVB World Tour Rankings.
Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross continued their undefeated streak, sweeping China's Yuan Yue and Fan Wang. After a close start to the first set that ended 21-16, the Americans dominated in the second, closing the match out with a 21-9 second set scoreline.
Upsets of the Day
Austria is having a fantastic day on the beach, with Clemens Doppler and Alexander Horst beating gold-medal favorites Bruno Oscar Schmidt and Alison Cerutti 2-1.
“We’ve played so many times against each other that we knew we didn’t have to create a completely new game, but that we needed to do the things we do well,” Doppler said. “They are good friends of our, but of course we wanted revenge from Porec and of course it felt very good to win against them.”
Certainly a single loss doesn’t put Bruno and Alison out of medal contention, but it does illustrate the level of competition and parity in the men’s beach field.
Qatar's Jefferson Santos Pereira and Cherif Younousse played the match of their lives, defeating Spain's Adrian Gavira and Pablo Herrera even after a demoralizing 13-21 first-set loss. The victory for the Qatar duo and Patterson and Gibb's loss to the Austrians means every team in Pool F is 1-1.
Olympic Moments
You may have noticed the empty seats in the beach volleyball stadium. Beach volleyball is one of the most popular Olympic sports, and the tickets for the Rio competition sold out like lightning, but according to the Associated Press, fans appear to mostly be interested in only watching their favorite duos.
"Beach volleyball has been one of the top tickets at the Olympics, but the venue at Copacabana beach has been sprinkled liberally with empty seats.
"With four matches per session, fans are apparently coming to see their favorite team and then leaving," the AP reported. "Never was that more clear than Monday, following Brazil's three-set loss to Austria. With fans streaming out of the 12,000-seat venue, the public address announcer invited those staying behind to move down to better seats."
In the last point of Patterson and Gibb's match versus Huber and Seidl, Austria hit a ball that was way out, but the referee called Gibb in the net. Gibb immediately signaled for a challenge, but the ref did not oblige. Evidently Gibb wasn't denying that he was in the net, merely arguing that the ball had hit the sand before he netted, which is not one of the situations in which the challenge can be used.
"That's just us not giving up," Patterson said.
Many family members of Olympians watched their first matches from Rio today, including Patterson's wife Alexis and Kristin Hildebrand, the wife of Patterson and Gibb's coach Tyler Hildebrand.
The Akinradewos also made an appearance.
As did the Shoji brothers' better halves.
For all of today's results, click here, and to see more of our Olympics coverage, visit our Rio 2016 event page.
Want a more inside look at USA women? Be sure to catch our two episode FloFilm documentary "All In: USA Women's National Volleyball Team" to see their journey to Rio here.