FIVB官方报导
USA Challenged by China for Repeat of Olympic Success
美国想重蹈奥运会的成功受到中国的挑战[/COLOR]
Misty May digging her way towards the Infote Athens Open final
Athens, Greece, 3 June 2006 C Top-seeded Kerri Walsh and Misty May had to fight back from one set down in the all-USA semi-final, but eventually edged Rachel Wacholder and Elaine Youngs 2-1 (24-26, 21-15, 15-07) in 52 minutes, to qualify to Sunday’s final in the Infote Athens Open of the 2006 Swatch-FIVB World Tour. It will be the second final appearance for Walsh and May in the very same Stadium where they won the 2004 Olympic Games gold medal, defeating Brazil’s Adriana Behar and Shelda.Bede.
This time around, however, up against the USA in the final will be China’s Ji Linjun and Wang Lu, who also scored a comeback upsets victory 2-1 (21-16, 14-21, 10-15) in 46 minutes over Brazil’s second-seeded Larissa França and Juliana Felisberta Silva in the other semi-final, here, Saturday evening. The 25th-seeded Chinese, who had finished a mere 17th last week at the Shanghai Open, came through the losers’ bracket, following a Round II, straight-set defeat in the hands of Greece’s Vasso Karadassiou and Vicky Arvaniti.
França / Felisberta Silva, who had upset Walsh / May in the final of the season’s opening Swatch-FIVB World Tour at Modena, will have to contend with a bronze-medal match appearance, where they take on Wacholder and Youngs.
The defending Champions of the Infote Athens Open, Brazil’s eighth-seeded Renata Ribeiro and Talita Antunes, who had defeated França / Felisberta Silva here in 2005, came within a breath of a semi-final appearance, but were too tired in their second match of the afternoon to upset third-seeded Wacholder and Youngs. Ribeiro / Antunes had already edged China’s Wang Jie and Tian Jia 2-1 (22-20, 15-21, 23-21) in over an hour, when they fell to the Americans 2-0 (21-13, 21-18).
The only European team left in contention after day 2 of the competition, the Netherlands’ Rebekka Kadijk and Merel Mooren left the event early on Saturday, when they lost to China’s Ji Linjun and Lu Wang 2-0 (21-14, 21-15), to rank 7th.
The bronze- and gold-medal matches of the Infote Athens Open will be played under floodlights, Sunday evening, at the Olympic Beach Volleyball Centre, on the Coastal Zone of Phaleron, beginning at 21:00 local time (18:00 GMT).
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