2008 Olympic Gold Medalists

2008 Olympic Gold Medalists
(click on picture to see larger picture)

Sunday, June 24, 2007

Au Revoir to Paris

And so the first Grand Slam of the 2007 FIVB Tour ends. Successful for the americans overall and decent for Phil and I.

I last checked in Friday night and we only had one game since then. We played Emanuel and Ricardo midday Saturday and it was a great game. Very high level match that could have gone either way. As expected, they served me every ball and I felt pretty good in general. We went mostly at Ricardo and he was up and down. Phil blocked him pretty well and I dug him well too. The difference was probably their serve. Both of them had clutch serves at the right time and we did not. We had our chances in the second game but a couple of little miscues were the difference between winning and losing. It was tough to swallow but I look at it in a positive light. We played the best team in the world down to the wire and if a couple of things had gone differently we would have won in two or three games. A realistic point of view if you will.

From the qualification for the Olympics point of view, we are still in a solid place. Lambo and Stein have jumped out to a slight lead with their 3rd place finish here and Jake and Rosy and Phil and I are all knotted up. But guess what, we get to do it again next week. Yahooooo!!!!!

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Looks like it is going to be coool in Stavanger. Hope it's really 'cool' for you and Phil and the rest of the American teams.
Have fun!

Uncle Jim.

Anonymous said...

I'm impressed that the americans did so well considering a few things:

1. It's not like they've been playing with that ball all year [life] as the rest of the fivb has
2. Playing a bunch of teams they're not very fmailiar with
3. Jet lag/overseas travel


All in all i'd say it was a pretty successful outing, but that's not to say we all don't hope and almost expect the yanks to be a in few finals, with hopes of at least one all american final :)

Good luck guys.

Anonymous said...

Todd,
Seems you gave Emanuel-Ricardo their best match, too bad it was in the Round 3... ahhh the luck of the draw. Good luck in Norway.

Jeff

Anonymous said...

Yes, I really agree with the previous post (12:46). What all of you american teams did was amazing.

Euro sport showed only the games with Lamert/Metzger for the US teams. I would really like to watch your game vs Santos/Rego, I just cant figure out any source that can show that game now.

I think that if you and Phil can just continue to be fired up and do your best, and keep up the hard work, succes will continue to follow you.

Good luck!

/Peter

Anonymous said...

Good showing TJ. I agree that it sure would be nice to have something like AVP TV to be able to pick up the games either live or archived... technology is slowly catching up with the sport and allowing it to be more closely followed by the people around the world who want to see it and enjoy it.

Good luck to you and Phil again this weeked. See you in BALI this year. = )

DR in TKY