China’s Wang Jie hits over compatriot Xue Chen / THOMAS COEX/AFP/Getty Images
When a Chinese team plays at the Beijing Olympics, the volume of crowd support can be impressive. And when two Chinese teams play each other? It was far short of deafening this morning when the team of Tian Jia and Wang Jie met Xue Chen and Zhang Xi in the semifinals of women’s beach volleyball. Despite the goading of the deejay, the 80s hits cranked between points and the troops of bikini clad cheerleaders, the crowd was more subdued than normal. Perhaps they realized that cheers of “Go China” were superfluous. Perhaps they were just content to watch the furious battle of two Chinese sides vying to be the first to play for a beach volleyball gold medal.
In the previous semifinal Americans Kerri Walsh and Misty May-Treanor dispatched the Brazilian side of Renata Ribeiro and Talita Rocha 21-12, 21-14 in a succinct 39 minutes. The all-Chinese match lasted nearly twice as long. The junior side of Xue, 19, and Zhang, 23, took the first set 24-22. Tian and Wang won the next in an epic 29-27, the highest scoring set of this Games. In the tiebreaker Tian and Wang slogged ahead to a 15-8 win. The final point ended with the pair collapsed on the sand in celebration while Zhang looked over a fallen Xue, who had injured her back on the play.
Tian, a three-time Olympian whose side finished ninth in Athens, the previous best by a Chinese team, admitted the match was “really not easy,” then sat down to casually read a newspaper before the post-competition press conference. She and Wang should face an even tougher battle against Walsh and May-Treanor in the final Thursday. The Americans are the defending gold medalists and are on a yearlong, 107-match winning streak. During Thursdays final the Chinese side will at least know they have the crowd behind them. “The fact that we are playing on the home court will give us a good boost,” said Wang. “We hope that we will not fail to live up to the expectations of the people here.” Said May-Treanor: “We’ll just have to pretend the crowd are cheering for us.”