Cuba didn’t deserve that.
Jorge Alayo and Noslen Diaz turned the story of seaside volleyball in these Olympic Video games after they not solely upset their method to a Pool D win however seemed very a lot the a part of the favorites to take action, sweeping Andy Benesh and Miles Partain, Brazil’s George Wanderley and Andre Loyola, and tacking on the anticipated victory over Morocco. After these three matches, Alayo led the match in blocks per set. Diaz, the tallest defender within the subject, was large, a Giannis Antetokounmpo on sand.
Their reward?
Drawing Sweden, the most effective crew on the earth, the pair who has made 10 straight finals, within the first spherical of the playoffs.
How does this occur?
Pool play.
The present format of the Olympic Video games is a round-robin fashion pool play wherein the 4 groups in every pool all play each other. The highest three groups break pool, with the 2 finest third-place groups, as decided by set and level differential, starting within the spherical of 16.
As a result of Sweden’s win, over Australians Mark Nicolaidis and Izac Carracher, got here in a sweep and considered one of their losses — to Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan — got here in a three-setter, they started playoffs within the spherical of 16.
The identical spherical the place the entire 3-0 groups started.
To name the system unfair, as many have, isn’t my favourite verbiage. It’s a good system in that it’s equally unfair to everybody. Cuba may have gone 1-2 in pool play — because the on-paper seeding would have anticipated — and drawn a 3-0 Swedish crew and few would have blinked an eye fixed about it. In that sense, it’s truthful.
However it’s unjust.
A crew with two losses and one win shouldn’t be in the identical place as a crew with three wins.
Cuba was unjustly punished for profitable pool and enjoying arguably the most effective seaside volleyball of any crew via the primary three matches. Sweden was unjustly rewarded for taking part in their worst seaside volleyball in additional than a calendar yr.
This presents one of many many points with pool play: there are oftentimes little to no penalties for dropping, and little to no profit to profitable.
There may be sometimes an incentive to lose.
Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers had no intention on dropping their opening spherical of pool play to Latvian kids Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Martins Plavins in Beijing of 2008. Certainly, the heavy favorites to medal in Beijing very a lot desired to win.
They didn’t, and the 21-19, 21-18 stunner continues to be thought-about the best upset in Olympic seaside volleyball historical past.
It was additionally, unbeknownst to them on the time, the most effective factor that would have occurred.
That loss, and subsequent pair of wins of their subsequent two matches, earned them one of many best routes to a gold medal match possible. Within the three ensuing rounds, Dalhausser and Rogers performed the 20 seed, the 8 and the 15 to make it to the gold medal match towards Brazil. Their semifinal was not towards Emanuel and Ricardo, or Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal, or Fabio and Marcio, however … Georgia.
Georgia?
Georgia.
“The celebs aligned,” Dalhausser stated years in the past.
And so they aligned as a result of they misplaced.
Eight years later, in Rio, the alternative occurred. Dalhausser and Nick Lucena took care of enterprise in pool play, profitable all three matches, as was anticipated of the No. 3 seed and arguably finest crew on the earth. The issue then was that Alison Cerutti and Bruno Schmidt, the No. 1 seed additionally with a agency case for the most effective crew on the earth, didn’t. Upset by Austrians Alex Horst and Clemens Doppler — “unhealthy, unhealthy,” Alison nonetheless says, laughing and shaking his head about that match — Alison and Bruno had been now on the opposite finish of the bracket, with Dalhausser and Lucena.
When the 2 powers met, then, the match many thought-about the de facto gold medal match wasn’t for a medal in any respect, however for fifth. Alison and Bruno received that match and went on to win the gold medal.
Dalhausser and Lucena, winners of 4 straight by that time in Rio, didn’t deserve that matchup any greater than Cuba did on Sunday in Paris.
The truth of the Olympics, and the pool play format wherein it’s performed, is that Dalhausser and Lucena would have been higher off dropping a match in Rio.
Similar as Cuba in Paris.
However as a result of that is the Olympic Video games, no crew will outright forfeit in an try to enhance their draw (though, prior to now, there was an incentive to forfeit, one thing that has since been rectified, with groups profitable one level for a loss and 0 for a forfeit). Such isn’t the case in Problem occasions on the Seashore Professional Tour.
Those that have adopted the Seashore Professional Tour aren’t unfamiliar with the rash of forfeits that happen within the second spherical of pool play between two groups who received their first match. Win or lose, each groups will start playoffs within the spherical of 16. Gamers continuously choose to relaxation as an alternative, selecting the advantage of taking a match off their legs as an alternative of the “improved seeding” that will or could not include profitable pool.
In lots of instances, groups will do the maths and try to forfeit sooner than the opposite crew, as a result of they know ending second in pool is definitely extra useful than profitable.
This precise state of affairs performed out within the Haikou Problem final fall. Two groups — I received’t point out who — understood that the one method they’d play Spain’s Adrian Gavira and Pablo Herrera — arguably the most effective crew within the match — within the first spherical was in the event that they received pool. So that they performed rock, paper, scissors, each groups desirous to lose, as a result of dropping was in impact an enchancment upon their seed within the playoff rounds.
Welcome to sports activities competed in a pool play format, women and gents.
There’s a resolution. A straightforward one, too. A format wherein such messes aren’t discovered: Double-elimination tournaments.
Each match in a double-elimination format has each rewards and penalties. Win, and also you advance additional into the match. Lose, and also you sentence your self to an extended grind via the loser’s bracket.
It’s simply, rewarding winners, punishing losers.
There may be the possibility, after all, in a double-elimination format that two top-seeded groups are upset and meet sooner than in any other case can be anticipated in an elimination spherical.
To me, that’s a simply system.
Winners transfer on. Losers don’t.
That’s sports activities.
Pool play is hardly sport.
It renders many — the bulk, in actual fact — of matches hardly greater than exhibitions. Few penalties. Few rewards. Simply theater for theater’s sake.
The 1996 Atlanta Olympic Video games, the primary wherein seaside volleyball was an Olympic sport, was performed in a double-elimination format.
I don’t know why we ever went away from it, however I do know this: It’s time we return.
