HERMOSA BEACH, California — On and on and on the listing went, to the purpose that Tri Bourne, sitting down with USA Volleyball outdoors hitter Kelsey Robinson Prepare dinner someday and center Dana Rettke one other, laughed and questioned: So. .. is there any staff within the Paris Olympic Video games that isn’t contending for a medal?
To which each of them replied, in impact: Not likely.
“Now there’s a whole lot of groups which have a sensible likelihood of successful a gold medal,” Robinson Prepare dinner mentioned. “I might say Turkey, Brazil, China, Japan, Italy, Serbia, Poland, us — I’m not kidding, something can occur.”
Sure, Robinson Prepare dinner is taking part in the position of the sage veteran, one during which you will need to by no means underestimate any opponent, even France, appreciable underdogs Pool A. It’s an essential hat to put on, significantly in an occasion as distinctive because the Olympic Video games, the place the lights are brightest, the stage largest, the place every thing is magnified to a level solely seen as soon as each 4 years. However the unprecedented depth of the sphere can be a professional fact, a results of the Olympic system shifting to favor a stronger match relatively than a extra globally balanced one.
“How they’ve accomplished the qualification is completely totally different than yr’s previous,” Robinson Prepare dinner mentioned. “It’s a real rating, which hasn’t all the time been the case. It was two groups from each continent, mainly, and now it’s one by ten. It’s going to be very gnarly.”
Certainly, solely Kenya and France, qualifying by advantage of a continental berth and a house wild card, respectively, might be thought of comparatively simple victories. After that, it’s, as Robinson Prepare dinner mentioned, her California vernacular displaying, “gnarly.”
Rettke agreed, rattling off the same laundry listing of potential medal winners. They’ll be examined instantly, in a pool that features each the gold medal winners from 2021 — the USA — and bronze in Serbia, whose seeding dipped as a consequence of a poor displaying at VNL that was principally the results of not sending their full roster. Brazil, the silver medalists in Tokyo, headline a Pool B during which they’re heavy favorites to win over Poland, Japan, and Kenya.
However it’s the Italian girls who enter the Video games because the odds-on favorites to win gold, coming off a VNL-winning marketing campaign that noticed them vanquish the USA, Poland and Japan. Solely Brazil, with arguably the most effective participant on this planet in Gabi, boasted a greater document within the VNL, whereas Italian outdoors Paola Egonu led all scoring and completed fourth in blocks.
Since successful that historic gold in Tokyo, the USA, as each Robinson Prepare dinner and Rettke agreed, hasn’t totally rediscovered its prime kind simply but.
“Every time you step on the court docket it’s a special equation to success,” mentioned Robinson Prepare dinner, who’s taking part in in her third Olympic Video games. “I’m simply excited to see what our highest potential seems to be like as a result of I don’t assume we’ve gotten there but. The final three years we’ve been looking for our identification as a staff. We all know what Turkey’s finest seems to be like. We all know that max, however we don’t know what ours seems to be like and that’s what fires me up is to search out that.”
If and after they do, it is going to add yet one more layer to the deepest Olympic discipline in latest reminiscence.
Coming Friday: A conplete USA Volleyball schedule, with all of the pool-play matches for the boys’s and ladies’s indoor groups and all 4 seaside groups.
