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 Cook dinner at some point and center Dana Rettke one other, laughed and questioned: So. .. is there any workforce within the Paris Olympic Video games that isn’t contending for a medal?
To which each of them replied, in impact: Probably not.
“Now there’s a number of groups which have a practical probability of successful a gold medal,” Robinson Cook dinner mentioned. “I might say Turkey, Brazil, China, Japan, Italy, Serbia, Poland, us — I’m not kidding, something can occur.”
Sure, Robinson Cook dinner is taking part in the function of the sage veteran, one wherein it’s essential to by no means underestimate any opponent, even France, appreciable underdogs Pool A. It’s an essential hat to put on, notably in an occasion as distinctive because the Olympic Video games, the place the lights are brightest, the stage largest, the place every little thing is magnified to a level solely seen as soon as each 4 years. However the unprecedented depth of the sphere can be a respectable reality, a results of the Olympic system shifting to favor a stronger event quite than a extra globally balanced one.
“How they’ve finished the qualification is completely completely different than yr’s previous,” Robinson Cook dinner mentioned. “It’s a real rating, which hasn’t at all times been the case. It was once two groups from each continent, principally, and now it’s one by means of 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 straightforward victories. After that, it’s, as Robinson Cook dinner mentioned, her California vernacular exhibiting, “gnarly.”
Rettke agreed, rattling off an identical 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 resulting from a poor exhibiting at VNL that was largely the results of not sending their full roster. Brazil, the silver medalists in Tokyo, headline a Pool B wherein 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 one of the best participant on the earth in Gabi, boasted a greater file 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 Cook dinner and Rettke agreed, hasn’t absolutely rediscovered its prime kind simply but.
“Every time you step on the courtroom it’s a distinct equation to success,” mentioned Robinson Cook dinner, who’s taking part in in her third Olympic Video games. “I’m simply excited to see what our highest potential seems like as a result of I don’t suppose we’ve gotten there but. The final three years we’ve been looking for our identification as a workforce. We all know what Turkey’s greatest seems like. We all know that max, however we don’t know what ours seems like and that’s what fires me up is to seek out that.”
If and once they do, it can add 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.