Paris 2024 Olympics, winning debut for Italy’s Paola Egonu
Paris 2024 Olympics, winning debut for Italy's Paola Egonu
In the opening match of the women's Olympic volleyball tournament, valid for Group C, Italy beat the Dominican Republic 3-1 with a few too many qualms. 25-19 24-6 25-21 25-18 were the set partials.
The sign that it won’t be as easy a match as was thought came from the 0-2 with which Julio Velasco’s Azzure went under immediately, but fortunately they recovered immediately and reversed the situation almost immediately on 7-4.
The Dominicans recover at 10-10 but a 5-0 partial in our favor basically decides the first set as the girls manage to maintain this margin of advantage.
It doesnì t happen like that in the second set instead: on 18-12 it seems done for Italy and instead the Central Americans nibble the gap, recover from 23-19 to 23-23, cancel a set point on 24-23 and with three consecutive points surprisingly tie the score.
Also in the third set, the uncertainties of the Azzurri continued as they went down 8-11 and 9-12, recovered but the partial remained even until 16-16 when ours finally began to stretch and went back ahead in the set count.
The fourth partial è the least uncertain one, with Italy going up 10-3 and managing not to let the Dominicans get too close until the end. Top scorer of the match, needless to say, è Paola Egonu with 25 points, Anna Danesi closes with 11 and Myriam Sylla with 10, for our opponents 21 by Gaila Gonzalez Lopez.
