2016 Olympic Games - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Quote from saishuu

Max Holt not getting a nod is just odd.

Holt is statistically the #2 best blocker, I think he's "sacrificed" because they want to make sure each team have at least one individual award so the 2nd spot goes to Birarelli (who also has a very good tourney, so I am good with that)

Quote from flyingdutchman

Natualizing players is totally against the idea of National Teams -- > playing for your country, because you have the nationality by birth/by your parents/one of your parents.

Indeed, Aguero, Costagrande, Goncharova...Mammadova...Wilfredo Leon...all the same...I'm totally against it.

ha.

did you forget about the kenyan woman marathoner who ran for holland? kiplagat?

you should be happy then with qatar, bahrain, turkey and azerbaijan shopping sprees of all those kenyan, cuban, ethiopian, bulgarian etc. athletes then.

at least juantorena lives in italy and speaks italian...

Okay. If we are going to based the awards at the stats. Max Holt, Erik Shoji and Micah Christenson all got robbed.

at the Olympics there's no prize money, so individual awards is just symbolic, who represented better each position.

If u look at the stats Mikhaylov was the best spiker, bust just looking from the outside seams like Wallace was more impressive.

Serginho deserved MVP, liberos never win anything, he was the only libero to have won a MVP at the WL.

Also Volvchi was by far the best blocker.

And nothing for Zaytsev or Juantorena?

They need to have best server for Zaytsev and Rasic.

Pathetic individual awards, even worse than usual. Holt and Zaytsev getting nothing, the worst libero of the top 4 teams gets the mvp award, ridiculous.

I was on vacation during OG but I watched matches. In general Brazil was the best in crucial part of the tournament. Wallace was simply astonishing, solving matches alone. Bruno showed his magic and it was enough. Blengini did a great job without any good middle and as some1 said in previous post when Birarelli and Volvich are the best MB's in tournament it says a lot in terms of blocking. USA and Speraw found mental toughness and closed mouth for critics about that (inclunding me). Russia reached maximum in this moment IMO. They were carrying a burden from doping scandal and Alekno lost Muserskiy. OH line was insufficient to hold pressure with veteran Tetyukhin and youngsters Klyuka and Dmitry Volkov. IMO Alekno should transfer Mikhaylov on OH and put Bakun as OPP to get offensive power. I was expecting that move in semifinals

The biggest disappointment was France but in some way I expected they are going to have problems. Tillie is forcing 7 players in last 2 seasons, sooner or later their form should drop and it happened in Rio. I knew they won't beat Brazil in the last match. There won't be any changes in their roster but I found interesting what will Tillie do in the future. Canada used schedule and got into QF's, Hoag once again showed his leading skills.

To summarize, I was expecting more from Rio. To be precise, better and balanced volley but instead that we got 3x 3:0 and 3:1 result in QF's. Only thrilling match, for me, was USA - Italy.

Iran's biggest regret should be not locking Velasco in a 10 years long contract, the quarterfinal match against Italy was the proof that with a better guidance they could have won a medal in every world class competition for the last 3 years in a row. What did they win in the end, the Asian games and a bunch of 5th and 6th places. Really underwhelming results for such a team loaded with talent.

Quote from arman

If Russia hadn't won Egypt 25-9, we would have had Italy as record holder. One of my main regrets of this OG...

I hope I can proudly say it was a record for a semifinal! Or at least for a WON semifinal, may be even for a won OG match xD