“It’s important that we remember all of the hard lessons, the tears, the knocks and the fights, because if we can learn from those we’ll become stronger and be able to achieve our goal of reaching the Olympics.”
The fact that any British men’s teams have made it out on to the World Tour is impressive in itself.
Owing to a shortfall in UK Sport funding, external, in October last year British Volleyball were forced to drop two of six programmes from funding support, external – the men’s beach and women’s indoor teams were the unlucky ones, external.
Two British beach volleyball pairs – Jody Gooding, external and Gregg Weaver, external plus Steven Grotowski and John Garcia – found the funds to compete in Brazil but found themselves competing against each other in qualifying.
Gooding and Weaver came through in straight-sets but then suffered defeat to number four seeds Brad Keenan and Casey Patterson of the United States.
“We felt comfortable towards the middle of the first set and we were competitive against a very highly ranked team. The Americans then upped their game taking the first set 21-17 and the second set more comfortably,” said Weaver.
Whilst the women have an outside chance of qualifying both pairs for the 2012 Olympics, realistically just one male team will make it through to London, by virtue of the host-nation allowance.
Further pairings are expected to challenge the two who began the season in Brazil, with Robin Miedzybrodzki and Tom Lord currently preparing for the start of their campaign in Greece and Sheaf brothers, Jake and Luke, also expressing an interest in joining the tour.