Reigning world champions Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser will play for the gold medal in beach volleyball after they beat Georgia 21-11, 21-13 in their semi-final yesterday in one of the quickest matches of the Olympics.
The US pair will play on Friday against Marcio and Fabio, who upset Athens gold medalists and fellow Brazilians Emanuel and Ricardo 22-20, 21-18 yesterday to reach the final.
The win by Rogers and Dalhausser gave the US a chance to sweep the beach volleyball gold medals in Beijing. Americans Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor, the defending Olympic champions, will play China in the women’s final today.
Rogers and Dalhausser’s victory just 41 minutes — and that included a brief argument Rogers made over a call before he decided that, well, it probably didn’t matter.
“We definitely let off the gas in the second set,” Rogers said. “For me, the foregone conclusion was there.”
The pair lost their first point and then scored the next eight, opening up a 12-2 lead before the Georgians awakened. In the second, Rogers seemed to pass up opportunities that might have required more effort than the simple bump-set-spike they knew would be coming soon.
“We have another match,” Dalhausser said. “We were up 10 points. There’s no reason to waste energy.”
“We had to give 100 percent, no, 120 percent, to get past them,” said Marcio, who fell on top of Fabio Luiz and rolled around on the sand when they won.
“We couldn’t allow ourselves to think it was Ricardo and Emanuel on the other side of the net — that would be too emotional. We just had to play a really excellent match,” he said.
Ricardo and Emanuel, role models for many Brazilian players, fought back from big deficits in both sets but it was not enough.
They will play for the bronze against Jorge Terceiro and Renato Gomes, native Brazilians playing for Georgia to avoid a quota that limits countries to two entries in the 24-team field.
The women’s final is sure to attract a lot of attention on television in the US and at the venue, where a steady stream of NBA players and other Olympic celebrities have come to see the US pair play.
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