Beach Volleyball Surprise

We were under the impression that we weren't going to be able to go to any events. I was pretty upset that there wasn't even a chance for it when we heard, but Sunday night we learned that we were going to get a chance to see some beach volleyball on Monday. While not the first sport you would think about when you look at the Olympics, but seeing an event at the Olympics is still a fantastic opportunity.

We actually had to get up at 7 a.m. so as to take a group picture with our uniforms on for Howard Sypher, the comm department head at Purdue who would be joining us at the volleyball match. It wasn't bad since that's not as early as we wake up for work, but I don't know how good we looked for the picture.

The beach volleyball venue is at Chayong Park, not very far from our university and familiar to us since the park has a large bar district on one side. We got to see the Australian and Angolan men play, then the highlight match, the Chinese and Belgian women. The Australians from both UQ and QUT dressed up to support their fellow Aussies, and cries of AUSSIE AUSSIE AUSSIE, OY OY OY! were jumping up every couple of minutes. After the match, the Aussie team even pointed at our section to recognize their cheering, which was pretty fun.

The China vs Belgium match was what the vast majority of the fans at the venue came to see, with the Chinese holding the No. 1 seed in the tournament. The Belgians were only No. 13, but they ended up taking the first set from the Chinese before losing the last two to allow China to advance. With our main concern being the medal count we keep seeing on the TV, I'm not ashamed to say I've been cheering against every Chinese team I watch. Certainly nothing politically motivated, I just don't want to lose the medal count. One thing that irks me is that China continues to put the medal counts up wrong. They place emphasis on only gold medals, not medals overall. So teams with five medals and only one gold are placed lower than a team with only two medals but both gold. It makes no sense, but it conveniently allows them to place China ahead of the U.S. because they have more golds than us but not as many medals overall.

The Chinese took every gold medals available in table tennis, but hopefully that can be answered back by the U.S.'s success in the pool yesterday. I had to work on Tuesday, but we made a point to watch those swimming matches. All those golds help, but the semifinal for Phelps was crazy. We all thought he was going to get second in the semifinal, certainly enough to move on, but not great. Then he turns on the afterburners on the final leg to go from a body length behind to a body length in front of his next competitor. I mean, it's not anything that hasn't been said, but the guy has to be part dolphin or something. I don't know about eight medals, but if anyone has a chance, it would have to be him.