On the day Kerri Walsh Jennings celebrated after winning bronze in her fourth trip to the Olympics, the woman who battled alongside her for years in the sand was nowhere near the beach-volleyball stadium or Rio’s spotlight.
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While Bednarczuk’s team plays for gold, Walsh Jennings and Ross will play Brazil’s Larissa Franca and Talita Antunes.
For the first time since the 2000 Summer Olympics in Sydney, Kerri Walsh-Jennings will not receive a gold medal in women’s beach volleyball.
Kerri Walsh Jennings won’t leave the Rio Olympics with a fourth straight gold medal, but she’ll go out a victor.
Worse, Walsh Jennings and Ross were devastated after their semifinal loss last night to the No. 2-ranked team, Agatha and Barbara, also from Brazil. “We won the right to fight again for Bronze”.
Asked if she and her partner will return four years from now, Ross indicated it was possible, but joked it could depend on the health of her partner, who already is the oldest female medal victor in beach volleyball history.
In the prior three Olympic Games, Kerri played alongside Misty May-Treanor and the duo won gold in all three appearances. 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.
The pairs traded points to a five-all tie to open the third frame, but it was Brazil that would inch ahead each time until Walsh Jennings turned away three Brazilian attacks before finishing a rally with her kill for a 7-6 United States of America lead. Walsh Jennings leaps in the air, Ross is down on the sand in joy.
Walsh-Jennings came out fired up as she belted a series of spikes but errors crept in as the more subtle Brazilians put the Americans under pressure with their greater variety.
“You’re either get a medal or you go home empty handed”, Ross said.
Ross, 34, took over in the second set as her partner faltered.
“I talked to myself all night long, I didn’t sleep and at some point I said, “You have to stop feeling sorry for yourself”.
April Ross made her Olympic debut at the London Games alongside Jen Kessy.
Walsh Jennings overestimated the amount of aces – the Brazilians only had five total in the match – but she clearly felt her return game was a major deciding factor in the outcome.
“I really had to step up and become a little bit bigger on the court next to her”, Ross said. Talita and Larissa never got closer than two points to end the set. “Today doesn’t make me any less blessed, it just makes me more determined”. Then it hit her.
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.
Does she miss the games?
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“I know I can, I don’t know if I will”, she said after the semifinals.
