Thursday, August 21, 2008

Dream In Gold

Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh managed to do a couple of the more difficult things in sports last night. Misty and "6 Feet of Sunshine" didn’t need any sunshine as they played in a driving rainstorm that perhaps helped the Chinese even the playing field a bit. Not only did they go into Beijing as the favourites (not ranked #1 which makes no sense but whatever) to win gold in Beach Volleyball but that is what they actually did! Not always easy to live up to lofty expectations. They not only accomplished that but they did it without loosing a single set and have pushed thier record to 108 matches since their last loss and 14th straight at the Olympics. That is over a year of competition both domestic on the AVP Tour and Internationally and covers this and the Athens Olympics. They also are the first team to ever win back to back gold at the Olympics.

With the 21-18, 21-18 win the duo have cemented them selves as the greatest female team ever on the beach and have made a strong case as the greatest team ever - male or female. For Walsh, the win marks her 100th career victory, becoming the youngest and fastest to ever reach the 100 wins. Misty has 103 wins. They are the only 2 women in an elite group that includes beach volleyball legends Karch Kiraly, Sinjin Smith, Randy Stoklos and Kent Steffes.

The only troublesome thing now is that both May and Walsh are looking to start families very soon and will most likely take 2009 off to have babies. Hopefully this isn’t the end of this dominating pair and they have at least 1 more Olympics left in them and a few AVP seasons left.
As Misty joked following the match maybe they can both start the next great team...no pressure for any yet to be created babies. But wouldn’t that be something?!

Like Misty says; individually they are good, together they are GOLDEN!

I am a huge volleyball fan and love to watch the game even if TSN and Sportsnet think that fat guys playing poker, dog shows and spelling bees are more compelling and offer higher ratings. If that is true then that is just wrong.
You know that I will be rooting for "The Thin Beast" Phil Dalhauser and "The Professor" Todd Rogers to grab the men’s gold tonight but it is not as sure a thing as May Walsh I am afraid, should prove to be a good match.

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