In suffering her first loss in Olympic beach volleyball, Walsh Jennings and partner April Ross were clearly the villains as they fell to Agatha Bednarczuk and Barbara Seixas, 22-20, 21-18.
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Walsh Jennings and Ross will compete for bronze against Brazil’s other team.
Walsh Jennings, who turned 38 on Monday, has a reputation among her fans and other athletes as a preternaturally upbeat person whose determination is so strong she played in the London games while in the first trimester of her pregnancy. I knew they were going to come at me, and I knew they were going to put some stuff on the ball, and I just didn’t stick my passes.
The Americans went 1-2 in the triple jump as Christian Taylor took the gold medal, while teammate Will Claye won the silver. Seixas and Bednarczuk handed Walsh-Jennings, the three-time defending gold medalist, her first Olympic loss on sand (she finished fourth as a member of the US indoor team in Sydney in 2000).
“Since the start of these Games we’ve been able to grow in each match, improving our concentration, our accuracy, and I think that made the difference”. You could see why. And for me it just meant so much more, because last night just felt so bad to play like that. Now it will just be for bronze and not gold on Wednesday night at Copacabana Beach.
Against Agatha and Barbara, who came into these Games ranked second, the Americans couldn’t get anything going.
They’ll compete for the bronze medal against against the other home crowd favorites, Larissa and Talita – Brazilian beach volleyball players are identified exclusively by their first names – Wednesday night.
“That was what kind of what set the tone and we never got our mojo on anything else”. After both teams traded point after point, the set was finally decided on a serve down the middle which Walsh Jennings and Ross both thought would sail out of bounds.
“They’ll fight tooth and nail”, Ross said.
But playing at a superb venue on a real beach at Copacabana, where the Brazilians have an enormous passion for the sport, Walsh Jennings will not win a fourth gold medal.
Many assumed before the Olympics began that these two teams would meet in the gold medal match.
When asked if she would cherish the bronze as much as the gold, she answered: “Times a million”.
“We had so many chances to take the match into our hands and do what we wanted, but we didn’t do that”, Ross said.
Agatha and Barbara were the world champions in 2015, so it would be hard to characterize the Americans’ loss as an “upset”, but when it comes to Walsh Jennings in the Olympics, any loss has to be considered a surprise.
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“I have a lovely family”, she said last week.
