HERMOSA BEACH, California — Brian Cook dinner runs an unbiased, deeply metric-based volleyball analytical website referred to as TruVolley. Whereas Cook dinner, an American who as soon as competed for USA Volleyball and is married to Olympic gold medalist Kelsey Robinson-Cook dinner, clearly has a leaning in the direction of the USA, his program doesn’t. It’s a machine doing what machines do: Taking numbers, spinning them up, spitting them out. A million unemotional, unbiased simulations of the Olympic Video games in all.
Which makes the numbers that produced concerning the upcoming Olympic Video games all of the extra engaging for USA seaside volleyball followers: 85.07 p.c.
These are the percentages that both Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth, or Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes come house with an Olympic medal.
Except your names are Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty Might-Treanor, one doesn’t get numbers reminiscent of these. That’s how sturdy the USA is coming into the Paris Olympic Video games, which start on Saturday.
Nuss and Kloth enter because the No. 2 seed, Cheng and Hughes the three. The one staff seeded increased is Brazil’s Ana Patricia Silva and Duda Lisboa, who’re at the moment on their worst skid as a staff, with three straight tournaments with out a podium and a ninth on the Gstaad Elite16, their lowest outcome since Might of 2022.
Cheng and Hughes — the previous USC teammates — and Nuss and Kloth — the previous LSU pair — in the meantime, are on fairly a distinct development. Each will enter Paris having gained the final occasion they performed; Cheng and Hughes claimed gold on the Ostrava Elite16, the place they beat Ana Patricia and Duda within the semifinals, and Nuss and Kloth gained in Gstaad, their second consecutive gold medal after additionally profitable on the Espinho Elite16.
It doesn’t get any higher than that, and it’s a distinctly completely different really feel from the Tokyo Video games, the place April Ross and Alix Klineman entered as heavy favorites — and delivered on these odds by profitable gold — and Cheng and Sarah Sponcil have been the plucky younger youngsters seeded ninth who would possibly upset a staff or two.
Now the USA is in its finest place to realistically win a number of medals since Walsh Jennings and Might-Treanor beaet Ross and Jen Kessy within the London championship match.
Not that it is going to be straightforward. It by no means is in any match, a lot much less one during which the elimination rounds are single-elimination, a lot much less when the stakes are the very best they may get each 4 years.
A lot much less when six groups have gained an Elite16 gold medal in 2024 alone.
The Large Six of the Paris Olympic Video games
For the previous three years, the query of who the perfect staff on this planet is resulted in a near-unanimous reply: Ana Patricia Silva and Duda Lisboa. Within the 25 tournaments they’ve performed since reuniting in 2022, they’ve gained 9 gold medals, three silvers, and 5 bronze. They’re the No. 1 ranked staff on this planet, although solely by the slim margin of 20 factors, over Nuss and Kloth.
When they’re taking part in on the peak of their talents, or wherever shut, as they did in Brasilia in Might, there isn’t any staff who can beat them. Six groups tried in Brasilia, and solely two managed to say a set. Even Nuss and Kloth have been smoked within the finals, a 21-17, 21-14 tour de pressure at house for Ana Patricia and Duda.
However they haven’t been in a position to maintain that stage of play in 2024. It’s nonetheless in there, no doubting that.
The query is: Can they revive it on the proper time?
And if not, can their fellow Brazilians, Barbara and Carol?
Like Ana Patricia and Duda, Barbara and Carol have been queens of the rostrum these previous three seasons: 12 medals in 32 occasions. Their largest? An Elite16 gold in Doha to start the season, their first win on the Volleyball World Seaside Professional Tour’s highest stage. It added one other stage of depth to what’s already broadly thought-about the deepest the Seaside Professional Tour has ever been.
And it was made all of the deeper one month later in Tepic, Mexico, when one more duo gained their first Elite16 gold.
Switzerland’s Tanja Huberli and Nina Brunner had already confirmed they may win on the sport’s highest stage. They’d gained a number of European Championships and had established themselves as some of the formidable defensive groups on this planet. And but, unusual because it nonetheless is to jot down, they hadn’t gained a gold on the Seaside Professional Tour.
That modified in Mexico, after they went undefeated en path to their first gold, beating 4 straight Olympic groups to clinch it.
Like Huberli and Brunner, Germans Cinja Tillmann and Svenja Muller had confirmed, many occasions over, they may compete, and win, on the highest stage. They only hadn’t achieved it in two years.
Lastly, almost two years to the day since their final gold on the Seaside Professional Tour, they did it once more, placing collectively a formidable displaying eventually week’s Vienna Elite16 during which they didn’t drop a match and made fast work of all three elimination rounds to their first gold of the Olympic quad. When she’s on — and certainly she was on — Tillmann has an argument as the perfect participant on this planet, and when Muller is constant together with her ball management, it’s, and was in Vienna, a potent combo.
These six groups — Nuss and Kloth, Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, Ana Patricia and Duda, Barbara and Carol, Huberli and Brunner, Tillmann and Muller — comprise what may very well be referred to as the Large Six of Paris. However lurking simply behind is one other contingent of groups who’ve come tantalizingly near breaking via. They only haven’t gained an Elite but this season.
It wouldn’t be a shock to see them do it in Paris.
Contenders to podium in Paris
Originally of the 2024 season, after some of the profitable years of their careers, Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson scrapped the whole lot.
These two golds they gained in 2024, in Jurmala and Montreal? They may do higher.
They type of have, type of haven’t.
The Canadians made the finals in Elite16s in Doha and Ostrava, falling to Barbara and Carol within the former, Cheng and Hughes within the latter. They’ve gained 18 of their 26 matches this 12 months and have only one end outdoors of the highest 5. If ever there have been a time for a Canadian girls’s staff to podium on the Olympics, 2024 is the 12 months, and Brian Cook dinner and TruVolley give them a 31.45% likelihood at doing simply that — increased odds than even Cheng and Hughes.
Simply behind them are the Netherlands’ Katja Stam and Raisa Schoon, who debuted in Tokyo as underdogs and can enter Paris as bona fide contenders to medal. They’ve medaled twice in Elite16s this 12 months — silver in a wonderful last in Tepic, bronze in a dominant win over Spaniards and TCU stars Daniela Alvarez and Tania Moreno in Espinho — and pushed Nuss and Kloth deep into the third set of the Gstaad quarterfinals, the place they fell 15-13 to the eventual champs.
Falling into the close-but-no-Elite-gold class of 2024 are Latvians Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoilova. The fourth-place Cinderellas of Tokyo, Graudina — who additionally performed at USC — and Samoilova have since established themselves as among the finest groups on this planet, and Graudina would be the flag-bearer for Latvia on the opening ceremonies. They’ve medaled in three out of their final 4 tournaments — silver on the Stare Jablonki Problem, bronze in Ostrava, bronze in Gstaad — and likewise gained a Problem in Recife, Brazil, in March.
All of these groups, all that depth, and nonetheless: 85.07 p.c likelihood of an American staff on the rostrum.
That’s a quantity USA Volleyball followers can get enthusiastic about.
