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Saturday, September 23
Blanton serves up victory in semis
Associated Press
SYDNEY, Australia -- Americans Dain Blanton and Eric
Fonoimoana saw red Sunday, and now they have a chance for gold.
|  | | Eric Fonoimoana celebrates after the United States wins its semifinal match against Portugal at Bondi Beach. |
Penalized a point for wasting time in their Olympic beach
volleyball semifinal against Portugal's Luis Maia and Joao Brenha,
Blanton served two straight aces to begin a five-point run that
gave the U.S. team a 15-12 victory and a place in the gold-medal
match.
Blanton and Fonoimoana fell on the sand in each other's arms
after Brenha was unable to handle Blanton's final serve, prompting
U.S. flag-waving by the cheering, sellout crowd at Bondi Beach.
"We didn't come here just to represent our country. We came
here to compete and win a medal," Fonoimoana said. "We've
accomplished half our goal. We'd like to have a gold medal now."
Their chance comes Tuesday (Monday night EDT) against Brazil's
Ze Marco de Melo and Ricardo Santos, who trounced Germany's Jorg
Ahmann and Axel Hager 15-5 in the other semifinal. Maia and Brenha
meet the Germans for the bronze medal, a match they lost in Atlanta
four years ago.
With the U.S. women failing to win a medal in beach volleyball,
all hopes for a gold in the sport that originated on the beaches of
California rest with Blanton and Fonoimoana.
A partnership for three years, they entered the tournament
seeded ninth and have swept through four matches to reach the final
against the third-seeded Brazilians, considered gold-medal
contenders from the start.
Blanton, 28, and Fonoimoana, 31, began play Sunday by trouncing
Rob Heidger and Kevin Wong 15-3 in an all-American quarterfinal.
The semifinal match was a tense, defensive struggle, with
Blanton warned twice by referee Peter Hreszczuk of Australia for
arguing calls. With Portugal ahead 11-10 after an hour of play,
Hreszczuk showed a red card to the Americans for being slow to take
the court after a timeout, giving Portugal another point.
Fonoimoana smashed a sideout kill to regain the serve for the
Americans, and Blanton went to work. His first serve caught the
line to the right for an ace, and his next one did the same on the
left to even the score at 12.
With the crowd screaming, Fonoimoana blocked a Brenha shot, and
then Blanton lobbed a kill over Brenha to make it 14-12 and match
point. It ended when Brenha was unable to handle the next Blanton
serve.
"I was just focused," Blanton said of his serving heroics. "I
wanted to get aggressive, and get it going."
He said the red card from Hreszczuk "kind of woke us up, fired
us up."
"We were at a point where we had to take control of the match
or it was going to spin out of control," Blanton said. "There was
nothing to be called. There was no decision to be made. An ace is
an ace."
In the quarterfinal match, Blanton and Fonoimoana rolled over
Heidger and Wong, running off 11 straight points with Blanton
repeatedly getting to attempted kills to keep rallies alive.
"To me personally, every other team we played against was in
slow motion and these guys were at light speed," Wong said, while
Heidger praised Blanton and Fonoimoana for keeping up their
intensity throughout the match.
"They really came out on fire," he said. "Usually a team will
let up a little bit after the initial push. They kept going
full-throttle all game. It kept us off-balance and we were never
able to get into it."
Fonoimoana said the main difference between the teams that
trained together was that "Dain and I played pretty much a
flawless game."
Knowing that Blanton and Fonoimoana will play gold soothes some
of the disappointment of the American contingent after the women's
teams were ousted Saturday.
Both women's teams were favored, but Jenny Johnson Jordan and
Annett Davis fell 15-9 to the surgical precision of Japan's Yukiko
Takahashi and Teru Saiki. Holly McPeak and Misty May battled
point-for-point with Brazilians Adriana Samuel and Sandra Pires
before succumbing 16-14.
Samuel and Pires later lost 15-6 in the semifinals to defending
bronze medalists Natalie Cook and Kerri Pottharst of Australia, and
Takahashi and Saiki fell to Brazil's world champions, Adriana Behar
and Shelda Bede, in a 15-10 match. Behar and Bede will face
Pottharst and Cook for the gold medal Monday, after Samuel and
Pires take on Takahashi and Saiki for the bronze.
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