For Walsh Jennings, it was not the fourth gold medal she had cherished, but she leaves Rio having lost only one Olympic beach volleyball match during her stellar career, Tuesday’s semi-final against Brazilian pair Agatha Bednarczuk and Barbara Seixas.
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Ross said she and Walsh Jennings didn’t notice the noise or let it affect their game.
Beach volleyball queen Kerri Walsh Jennings may not have had any practice at losing at the Olympics, but she seemed good even at that. That momentum came to a crashing halt against Ludwig and Walkenhorst, who broke the Brazilian favorites with a 21-18 win in the first set and then demoralized the fans at Copacabana Beach with a dominant 21-12 victory in the second.
Walsh Jennings had never lost an Olympic beach volleyball match before tonight.
The Americans, the world’s No. 3 in the latest FIVB rankings, will play Brazil’s Larissa and Tulita – the players, like the country’s soccer icons, use only one name – later Wednesday in the bronze-medal match.
To get that attractive medal, they beat the top-ranked team of Larissa and Talita from Brazil (Larissa Franca Maestrini and Talita da Rocha Antunes are known by their first names), 2-1 (17-21, 21-17, 15-9). “They make us try our best, make us do better”, Alison said. “You’re not going to win a match against an awesome team or even a mediocre team if you pass like that”.
In the loss to Brazil, Walsh-Jennings wouldn’t place any blame on her partner. That all changed when they ran into Agatha and Barbara, ranked second in the world behind their Brazilian counterparts, for a straight-set loss.
The third-seeded Ross and Walsh Jennings rebounded from a disappointing semifinal performance 22 hours earlier to score a 17-21, 21-17, 15-9 victory, in a heart-throbbing 54 minutes, over top-seeded and heavily-favored Talita Antunes and Larissa Franca of Brazil in the women’s bronze medal match at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
“A bad feeling”, she said afterward when asked how it felt to have the streak end.
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“One team is going home empty-handed, and the other is going home with an Olympic medal”, she said. But it was mostly Walsh Jennings, not Ross, who looked nervous and uncertain. “I really [ramped] that up”, she said, “And that [carried] over into the way I play the game, my posture and my body awareness in general”. Brazil’s Agatha Bednarczuk, center, celebrates a point against the United States with teammate Barbara Seixas de Freitas during a women’s beach volleyball semifinal match at the 2016 Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, Br. She won silver in 2012 with partner and former USC All-American Jennifer Kessy. “How she played was unbelievable”. “It was because I wasn’t passing the ball”, she said. But if Walsh Jennings keeps going – she is not ruling out an appearance at the Tokyo 2020 Games – they might one day be able to drive her to practice.
