The U.S. Women’s volleyball team had a bad enough start in its Olympic title defense. It managed to keep it from turning into a disaster.
The Americans lost the first two sets to China on Monday in a pool play format where total points and sets won can become playoff tiebreakers. So China’s eventual five-set victory - both teams scored the same number of points - left the reigning champions with a sense of relief.
“I’m really proud of our fight. You know, it’s not easy to go from being down 0-2 to fight neck-and-neck in the fifth like that,” setter Jordyn Poulter said. “You either win or you learn. So we have a lot of that we can learn from here, a lot that we can improve and get better at, and we don’t want to peak too early.”
They definitely didn’t have to worry about that.
“We obviously didn’t have the start that we wanted, but the third, fourth and fifth were really promising,” blocker Haleigh Washington said. “Going five with a team like China is incredible, and squeezing out any point we can get in the pool is going to be really important for us. And so I’m just happy the way that we just fought.”
The American women will play their second match of the preliminary round on Wednesday against Serbia, and then meet host France on Sunday in the pool play finale. The top two teams in each of the three pools and the top two third-place teams will advance to the knockout round, with wins, total points and set and point ratio used as tiebreakers.
“It just highlights how thin the margins are and how we have to take care of some of these little plays,” coach Karch Kiraly said. “And I want to give our team a huge amount of credit for fighting back. It is not easy to come back from down 2-0 against a really good China team.”
The Americans only lost one match in pool play in Tokyo and did not lose a set in the knockout stage en route to their first-ever gold medal. With eight holdovers from the 2021 champions, they arrived in Paris as the fifth-ranked team in the world.
But sixth-ranked China won the first two sets handily, 25-20 and 25-19, before the Americans came back to win the third 25-17 and rallied from a 13-10 deficit to tie it 13-all on a challenged ball that barely caught the Chinese end line.
For the first time, the crowd was engaged and chanting “U-S-A!” and at 17-14, China took a timeout to regroup. It was 21-20 for the Americans when they ran off the last four points, getting an ace from Washington to set up set point.
On the winner, Washington’s dig set up Andrew Drews’ spike.
But China again took the lead in the tiebreaker. The Americans staved off two match points before Zhu Ting’s spike went off blocker Andrea Drews for the victory.
Japan’s Yuto wins second gold medal in men’s street skateboarding
Paris, Jul 30 (AP) Yuto Horigome was not even thinking about the podium this time. The first men’s street skateboarding champion when the sport debuted in the Olympics in 2021, he was so far back going into his final try that it looked as if he would fall short.
Instead, the 25-year-old from Japan landed the best trick of the competition to pass Americans Jagger Eaton and Nyjah Huston for a repeat title.
Horigome scored a 97.08 on Monday to vault into first and secure back-to-back gold medals. He beat Eaton by just 0.1 points in a thrilling finish in front of a charged-up crowd that was much different than the empty stands in Tokyo three years ago.
“It means everything,” Horigome said. “It feels like a dream, a living dream. It’s crazy. Tokyo, no one was there, no crowds, so I’m very happy this time (with) all the fans here. It’s a special moment.”
Eaton and Huston each sat in first place during the final. Eaton was in gold medal position until Horigome finished a trick known as a nollie 270 to nosebluntside - similar to the one the Arizona native did minutes earlier to get into that spot.
“The roller coaster I was I thought I won, and then I got off the ride,” Eaton said. “Yuto, it’s all respect. I feel like at that level, between first, second and third, you could’ve picked anybody to win.”
Huston said of Horigome: “I don’t think Yuto feels fear or pressure. He definitely doesn’t feel pressure.”
As for how the 29-year-old longtime X Games star was feeling, it was mixed emotions after a disappointing seventh-place finish in Tokyo. With Snoop Dogg - who has quickly become one of the celebrity faces of this Games - in attendance, Huston nailed his second run with the Snoop and Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.” playing on speakers around La Concorde Urban Park.
But then came the end, when he and Eaton had one final chance to springboard Horigome and claim gold. Each wiped out in the final two jumps of the day.
“I was close to getting that gold, and I’m truly mad at myself for just not putting that last trick down because I know it’s something I can do,” Huston said, acknowledging a bit of redemption. “But it’s hard to put down those tricks in those moments.”
It was even harder because of the elite level of skateboarding going on, even among those who finished lower in the final. Canada’s Cornado Russell, who had three tricks scored over 92 but was out of medal condition because of two unsuccessful runs, had some high praise for what this street event represented for the sport.
“It’s the future,” Russell said. “It’s the future of skateboarding. This is one of the best ones. There’s many more to come.”
