Top seeds of the women's volleyball event China, Brazil and Cuba all made a good opening at their gold journey on Saturday, while another favorite Russia lost their chance to beat Italy, which was in a player hunger.
At the opener of the event, World's No. 2 Italy made a solid first step on their way to the first-ever Olympic gold by upsetting the Athens silver medalist Russia 25-20, 17-25, 25-16, 25-23.
Despite the absence of two key players Antonella Del Core and Taismary Aguero, the Italians overcome their tall, mighty rival with tenacious defense with Nadia Centoni, a substitute to Aguero, contributed 16 points to be team's No.1 scorer.
The disappointing Russia's head coach Giovanni Caprara blamed the negative attitude of his players on match schedule at the after-match press conference.
"The start time is not only early for us but for Italy too, but there is a different mentality with Russian teams regarding early matches as they tend to have an issue with fatigue," said Caprara.
"I have to persuade them and work hard to overcome this mentality and be prepared for tough matches, but it seems that I fought here alone. It's a issue of attitude," he said.
While Russia is trying to resolve the "fatigue" problem, defending champion China and Brazil both scored a straight win over Olympic debutants Venezuela and Algeria.
With the return of its star player Zhao Ruirui, who has rarely appeared at the global stage for her knee injure at the Athens Games, China handed out a volleyball lesson of Venezuela in a straight-set win.
More than 12,000 home fans gave confidence as well as pressures for China's head coach Chen Zhonghe and his players
"My players seem to be nervous at the beginning of every set and there is also too many service errors," he said. "I gave them a 70 for the so-so performance."
Brazil also harvest a 3-0 victory over the Algeria.
"We had no great trouble taking the victory, but I think it is very important that we took the game very seriously," said Brazil head coach Jose Guimaraes. "Now we have to focus on our next game."
Despite the dismal loss, the Algerias were determined to prove themselves and make progress by playing the strong rivals match by match.
Saturday's last match between Japan and the United States turned out to be a thriller as the U.S. women exhibited mighty attack while the Japanese staged their renowned stubborn defense. The Americans laughed till the end with home court-like support from the Chinese fans to their Chinese-born head coach Jenny Lang Ping. They won the match 3-1.
"I really wanted to win today's game, but we missed that and it's a real shame. Although we had plenty of long rallies we could not get the crucial points. The Americans made many mistakes, but we could not capitalize on the points," said Japanese spiker Saori kimura.
Twelve women's teams are divided into two groups in the preliminary round of the Olympic tournament in Beijing that run through August 9-17. Italy Algeria, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Russia and Serbia are in Pool B while defending champion China is with Cuba, Japan, Poland, the United States and Venezuela in Pool A. The knockout stage runs from August 19 to 23.
(Xinhua News Agency August 10, 2008)