Chinese beach volleyball men's duo Wu Penggen/Xu Linyin stopped short of marching further in Saturday's round of 16 matches as U.S. gold favorites and Brazilian defending champions narrowly earned their quarter final berths.
Wu and Xu, who are for their first time at the Olympics and remained unbeaten in the preliminary round, were eliminated by German pair David Klemperer and Eric Koreng.
The first set was 21-15 in favor of the visitors and they continued their winning momentum in the second set, prevailing over the hosts with 21:18 to end the match.
"Our rhythm of attacks was broken by them," said Wu after the match."We made too many mistakes and the German team played very well. Their offensives were very firm," said the 2.02-meter Xu, whose usual efficiency at the net was curbed in the match.
In another match, Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser of the United States were finally in top eight of the men's beach volleyball tournament after playing three sets.
The Beijing Games gold favorites led Swiss duo Martin Laciga and Jan Schnider 21-16 in the first set but was outscored in the second as the set ended 23-21 in favor of the Swiss.
Another difficult situation tested the Americans when the third set went into 6-0 in their deficit. But the 2007 world champions managed to come from behind, ending the decider 15-13.
To bounce back at the time of 0-6 deficit was "a great feeling," Dalhausser said after the match.
"I was bumped, but I still felt that we had a shot. I never thought we would lose and that in the end we could do a huge comeback," said the 2.06-meter man.
Defending champions, Ricardo Santos/Emanuel Rego of Brazil, were at the brink of being eliminated when Russian duo Dmitri Barsouk/Igor Kolodinsky won the first set and reached to set point in the second set.
Then the Brazilians bounced back to get their set point and led the Russians to finish the set 25-23. The third set went 15-12 in favor of the defending champions.
Another U.S. team, Jake Gibb/Sean Rosenthal, and the second Brazilian duo, Marcio Araujo/Fabio Luiz Magalhaes, earned their top eight berths as expected. They eliminated Pablo Herrera/Raul Mesa of Spain and Kentaro Asahi/Katsuhiro Shiratori of Japan respectively.
In other matches, Georgia's Renato Gomes/Jorge Terceiro beat Clemens Doppler/Peter Gartmayer of Austria, Reinder Nummerdor/Richard Schuil of the Netherlands downed Andrew Schacht/Joshua Slack of Australia and Austria's Florian Gosch/Alexander Horst eliminated Martin Laciga/Jan Schnider of Switzerland.
(Xinhua News Agency August 17, 2008)
