Volleyball: it's very close!

Volley that ball!
Originally uploaded by athens2004blog.

This afternoon we went to the first two men's volleyball quarter finals. It was best of five sets, first to 25 (or two clear points). Russia beat Serbia 29-27, 23-25, 27-25, 28-26 and Argentina lost to Italy 25-22, 22-25, 24-26, 26-28. Close or what?! Is volleyball always that close?

Apparently, volleyball took a long hard look at itself after its beach-based little sister started getting so much attention, so rules were tweaked to make it more exciting (not exactly sure how apart from that you could win points whether you served or not). The great thing about it compared to beach volley is that the rallies are much longer because it's so much harder to hit a winner. But they could do with some of the fun between points that they have at the beach. It does seem a little uptight in comparison.

Talking of rule changes, my baseball suggestions didn't go down too well with you lot. Apparently we were just unlucky to see a bad game and it would have been more fun if we were drunk.

The latest guesses have come in for the guess-the-winning-time-of-the-4x400m-mens-relay competition. Wonder Wally says 2:57:00, Pete from Blackburn says 2.56.22 and Rachel Archer in London says 2:55:76. According to the bottom of her email, Rachel is a Coffee Trainee. Does that means she's training to become coffee? Keep those guesses coming... STOP PRESS: I forgot to put in Ginger from Tennessee's guess -2:54:68!