Men’s Beach Volleyball: Long-shot Latvians Defeat Top Seed
August 9, 2008 by Sandy Mitchell
Filed under Sports Rumors
The men’s and women’s beach volleyball competition began yesterday with the preliminary rounds. The big upset was the Latvian team of Aleksandrs Samoilous and Martins Plavins, the #23 seed of 24 teams, defeating the Gold Medal favorites, Americans Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers. The Latvians won in two sets, 19-21 and 18-21.
This doesn’t necessarily mean that the US team is out of the competition. The volleyball teams are divided into six “pools” of four teams. Each team plays three times in the preliminary round, with the winner of each “pool” plus two “lucky losers” (the two second place teams with the best record) advancing to the quarter-finals.
Other Saturday men’s beach volleyball scores are as follows:
Heyer/Heuscher (Switzerland) over Conde/Baracetti (Argentina)
Ricardo/Emanuel (Brazil) over Fernandes/Morais (Angola)
Schacht/Slack (Australian) over Geor/Gia (Georgia)
Nummerdor/Schuil (Netherlands) over Laciga M./Schnider (Switzerland)
Since women’s vollyball is played in bikinis, shouldn’t the men be wearing tiny speedos? It might increase the number of women that watch.