Tag: valentina-gottardi

Beach Volleyball World Championships Week

I am not in Adelaide this week. I know this because I slipped on the ice while walking this morning. And because I’ll soon be awake to see midnight for the first time in a long time. But with the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships beginning in Australia, it seemed a good time to collect these Sandcast features on Valentina Gottardi, Tina Graudina and Anhelina Khmil. Hopefully they provide a little extra depth to the story about to unfold on the sand. In all three cases, their volleyball speaks (and entertains) for itself, but all three also have so much more to say about life, competition and a sport that’s difficult to resist.

Excerpt from Valentina Gottardi: One of the Main Characters

Few who watch her play are likely to forget the experience. Still just 22 years old as she settles into a new partnership with Orsi Toth, Gottardi is one of the sport’s best young players—and “young” may be an unnecessary qualifier. She is also one of any sport’s most distinctive players. Relentless, with a high jumper’s vertical and the body control of the dancer and gymnast she once was, she’s worth the price of admission.

For many athletes, the Olympics are the pinnacle of a career. For Gottardi, playing under the Eiffel Tower last summer was just the opening act. She made it to Paris while much of the world was still wrapping its mind around how good she could be—while she was, too, for that matter. It’s why she plays the way she does, every no-look flick, headlong plunge, and hammered spike an exploration of what’s possible and an expression of who she is. She’s Valentina Gottardi. Never more so than when her feet touch the sand.

“I feel myself on the court,” Gottardi said. “And sometimes I don’t feel myself outside, so when I play, I want to transmit what I feel and what I really am.” … Full story on Sandcast (free)

Excerpt from Anhelina Khmil and a Ukrainian Summer to Remember

At least as much as the tools to conquer the Big 12 and that will be needed to compete with the Ana Patricias, Brandie Wilkerson and Valentina Gottardis of the world, she also found community as part of a group of women with a shared goal. And in amassing the degree, friendships, connections and memories that come with college, TCU provided the building blocks of a future. Still, when she talks about trying to put everything else aside this year and enjoy the moment—a common throwaway line for seniors—it hits differently. As she puts it, war makes everything else complicated.

“I don’t like to think ahead,” Khmil said. “I don’t think it’s a good idea because as soon as I start thinking ahead and planning all that’s going to happen in six months or a year, it’s never going to be that way. It’s always something different. So I usually just wait and see. You cannot predict, especially right now.”

She follows the news from home. She tracks the alerts on her phone, the ones that tell her whether her hometown—her family—is targeted in the seemingly nightly barrages of drones and missiles. Davidova still lives in Ukraine with her family. All summer, whenever her phone buzzed with alerts, she called home to ensure her two children took shelter. The nomadic lifestyle can wear on every pro. But not like that. Khmil could see the toll it took. She suggested even she can’t fully grasp how that would feel, to be a mother in those moments. And yet, she worries, too, the stress no less real as a daughter and sister. … Full story on Sandcast (free)

Excerpt from Tina Graudina Finds Joy in the Journey

Hardly spendthrift, to the point of packing her own lunches [during an internship at the Latvian Mission to the United Nations], Graudina nonetheless laments how much of her disposable income is directed toward her Kindle. The temptation is just too great when new books are only a click away. She tries to exercise quality control, if not quantity control. Still enamored with fantasy worlds, she matches each fiction title with a title where she will “learn something that makes me smarter.” In recent months, she read Mark Blyth’s Austerity on financial austerity and European Union missteps in the 2008 Euro Crisis, as well as Richard V. Reeves’ Of Boys and Men about the developmental challenges for that gender in modern society.

There is power in understanding the world around us. Knowledge solves problems—it can help a country like Latvia survive and thrive. But there is power in imagination and inspiration, too, in the fictional worlds of novels and characters who discover hidden and marvelous talents. After taking a break in one world, Graudina was ready to return to the other, the one where she and Samoilova can leave schoolkids speechless when they visit classrooms, shine a spotlight on important issues and lift the profile of a country many would struggle to identify on a map. It’s where she wants to be for now. It’s who she is.

“I feel it in my heart that even if I don’t get a single medal for the rest of my life, as long as I feel the same way that I feel right now when I practice, when I play volleyball, I’m happy with this type of life,” Graudina said. “I feel so happy, so full with positive emotions—even when we lose, that anger of losing is directed in a positive direction.

“I really believe that the journey is so important to enjoy and also do properly. Because if you enjoy it and you put all your effort in it, the destination, the medals, they will come by themselves. That’s something that I’m focusing on this year and hopefully every single year from now on.” … Full story on Sandcast (free)

When Genius Shares the Sand

You hear your share of oohs and aahs around a beach volleyball court. That’s all the more true the week of an Elite 16 event, the Beach Pro Tour stops with the smallest fields and greatest concentration of world-class talent. The crowd, as one, gasps or vocalizes their appreciation for athletic dexterity, strength or daring do. That’s sort of the point of it all. 

It’s just that you rarely hear the crowd gasp like that in warm-ups. 

Then again, you players like Valentina Gottardi and Ana Patricia come around rather, well, rarely. Making it all the more special to get them on the same court. Even when it’s Court 2. 

Imagine Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge trading swings on a side field next to Dodger Stadium. Or Caitlin Clark and Sabrina Ionescu launching 3-pointers in a practice gym in the depths of Gainbridge Fieldhouse. 

That’s putting Gottardi and Ana Patricia on a side court, as they were Thursday. 

Once you get past the curious scheduling of it all, it’s actually kind of cool. It’s the music legend dropping in unannounced to play a set at the local bar. It’s feeling like you were in the right place at the right moment in time to enjoy something sublime. 

People can argue all day about the best players in the sand. You have your list, I have mine. 

Actually, I don’t—I’m not smart enough. But I do know the players I most enjoy watching. Not the team, mind you, the duos in whose fortunes I’m most invested and for whom I may or may not occasionally even cheer out loud after years of professional neutrality. No, instead these are individuals who rarely go a seven-point end change, let alone a match, without doing something that makes you grin and shake your head. 

Gottardi is the 22-year-old Italian so physically explosive that she might cut to the chase one of these days and leap over the net. Ana Patricia is the 27-year-old Brazilian and reigning Olympic gold medalist, who manages to combine jaw-dropping athleticism with the wily old-soul game of someone a decade her senior. 

To be clear, these aren’t one-woman teams. Woe to anyone who doesn’t give Duda her due, and Reka Orsi Toth is paired with Gottardi for a reason. 

It’s just that Gottardi and Ana Patricia do things that no one else does—whether because the rest of the world lacks the imagination, the athleticism or, frankly, the recklessness. 

They’re glorious. In our age of hyper-efficiency, they play as if to see what’s possible. 

As they warmed up for Thursday’s pool opener, they traded hammer blows that brought the crowd to life—it’s worth noting there usually aren’t even crowds for side-court warm-ups. Maybe they fed off each other in that brief moment. Just a little. They wouldn’t be the first to do so, and plenty of people have suggested Ana Patricia is a star who needs a challenge to hit her stride. 

Sadly, the match never quite turned into an epic. Ana Patricia and Duda managed their way to a tight, first set win and then eased to the finish line, 21-17, 21-15. The stakes were as low as they can be in this high-stakes world, the opening match of three for each team in the pool—with 12 of 16 teams advancing to the knockout rounds.   

Center Court gets the pyrotechnics, the music and the “Monster Block” and “Fireball” cues on the sound system. Court 2 generates its own noise. Thursday, it didn’t take a three-set thriller to make it as loud as just about any match on any court over the first two days. 

There was the roar when Gottardi, at something approaching full sprint toward the end line, slowed for the briefest of seconds to blindly set a ball for Orsi Toth at the net. 

Or when she sprinted to the net after a serve, tipped an attempted block skyward and, falling to her right, contorted her body to sweep the ball into the far corner for a point.

Or the reaction put-away, Ana Patricia’s block caroming off Gottardi’s shoulder and into the net before Orsi Toth set it for what is one of her partner’s trademark moves. Shoulders squarely facing two o’clock, she contorts her upper body and, in one sweeping motion, whips the ball back toward about 11 o’clock—in this case catching even Duda off guard. 

And there were “super spikes” aplenty. There are always super spikes, Gottardi’s vertical and power combining to punish the ball as few peers can. 

Now playing with her peer, Gottardi seems to play with more self-assured command. She still chases everything, sprints to the bench at timeouts and sometimes just bounds up and down in place when she can’t do anything else. But she’s evolving from someone with dreams to someone with goals, real, tangible goals that involve beating a lot of people. 

Someone who has been to places Ana Patricia has visited. The Brazilian might have ceded the spectacular to Gottardi more often than not on this day, but she found answer after answer. Well-timed blocks, perfect sets and ball after ball just drifting out of Italy’s reach. 

When Italy held a three-point lead in the first set and Gottardi went for the no-look option behind her head, there was Ana Patricia to calmly dig it and set up Duda. 

On set point, she blocked Gottardi, starting a sequence that finished with Duda going over on one for the point. 

It was Ana Patricia. Doing Ana Patricia things. Most days there are no ways through that. Even when you’ve got the body, mind and soul to try things no one else would dare. 

And as the noise from Center Court took over and stands emptied, the best show in volleyball came to a close on Court 2.