This will be the second time that two teams from the same country have faced each other in a women's beach volleyball gold-medal match.
Suddenly Rio had to come up with a suitable venue, just as it had to provide a new velodrome for cycling and a new beach-volleyball stadium.
This cult of the temporary has led to some splendid juxtapositions such as the beach-volleyball arena set against the stately backdrop of Palladian architect William Kent's 1759 Horseguards building in Whitehall, the heart of the British government.
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Ms. McKenzie applied her sensibility to several venues at the games, but it was most in evidence at the Horse Guards Parade beach-volleyball arena, a stone's throw from the Prime Minister's residence at 10 Downing St.
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Unlike on the beach-volleyball court, where a pair of U.S. women has snapped up three of the five gold medals the young Olympic sport has ever awarded, the U.S. women's volleyball team has never won gold.
After cheering on his compatriots to a narrow victory over Andorra at the raucous temporary beach-volleyball court on Tuesday, Nikos Kolas, the captain of the men's indoor-volleyball team, said he didn't bring any of his worries with him.
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And for much of the TV audience, wrestling will never be as, er, viewer-friendly as beach volleyball.
Commercially, it makes sense that beach volleyball and various X Games-like events have become part of the Olympic story in an effort to modernize the Olympics while targeting a more youthful demographic of viewers.
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Adding to the experience are the free plastic buckets and spades for making sandcastles, portable goals for beach soccer, nets for volleyball and even giant touch-screen internet terminals on the boardwalk.
May-Treanor finished 5th with then partner Holly McPeak in beach volleyball, while Walsh Jennings played on the women's indoor team.
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There also are kinks in the system a sign at Charing Cross station promised a 10-minute walk to Horse Guards Parade, venue of the beach volleyball, while a sign only one block further put the time at four minutes.
While their female counterparts had to fight for their gold medal Thursday in wet sand and smog-stained rain, the U.S. men's beach volleyball team had sunny weather.
Americans Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings, the undisputed royalty of Olympic beach volleyball after dominating the 2004 and 2008 Games, edged out their Chinese competitors Tuesday afternoon to advance to Wednesday's final, which will be their last game together.
There seems to be a grave worry here that 2.5 seconds of downtime between beach volleyball points would put 15, 000 people to sleep, so there's been a never-ending blast of music Miami Sound Machine, Maroon 5, Usher, Yakety Sax (better known as the theme to "The Benny Hill Show").
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