China women volleyballers beat Serbia to start medal hunt

LONDON, July 28 (Xinhua) -- China went off to a solid start to their medal quest by upsetting Serbia 3-1 in the Olympic women's volleyball tournament on Saturday, when Chinese top spiker Wang Yimei returned to court after being out for three months with an ankle injury.

The Chinese, champions in the 2004 Athens Games and bronze medal winners in Beijing, rallied to win the 100-minute tussle 2 16-25, 25-18, 25-13, 25-12.

Middle blocker Xu Yunli scored 17 points for China, the highest among her teammates, and Milena Rasic is Serbia's best scorer with 14 points.

Wang, 24, whose powerful spikes 3 was a constant threat to Serbia, scored 11 points including two ace 4 serves.

"It's our first game and Serbia is a strong rival. We have a hard start because the Serbia has made some changes on their starting squad 5 and we failed to coped with changes, but we have made full preparations for a hard game, so we rallied back and win," said China's head coach Yu Juemin.

Disappointment can be easily read on the face of the Serbian head coach Zoran Terzic on the dramatic loss of the game.

"We started really well with a lot of courage and power, and I really don't know why later, especially in service and attack we played very bad," he said.

Terzix explained the weary performance of the team's top spiker Jovana Brakocevic.

"She had a lot of problems this season with injuries. Five or six days before starting the Olympic Games she had a big injury during training. She is not ready to play," he said.

China enjoyed a "home advantage" as several hundreds of Chinese fans flow into the Earls Court arena 6 in London, while Serbia has their president Tomislav Nikolic on-the-spot support to the national women.

The Serbians showed strong determination to win from the first minute and they took an 8-3 lead with powerful spikes and solid blocks by wing spiker Brankica Mihajlovic and middle blocker Milena Rasic.

Chinese women, however, seemed quite nervous with chains of errors to allow their European opponents to expand their advantage to 13-3.

China staged a 7-5 run to catch up to 10-18, but their service and spike 1 errors cost them much. With an unanswered spike of Brankica Mihajlovic, Serbia took the set 25-16.

The Chinese recovered its rhythm and fought back strongly in the second set to take the lead 8-4 with Wang's powerful serves. They left the Serbians no time to adapt to their renowned 7 fast-attack style and enlarged their advantage to 22-15 with sound blocks and tricky 8 drops of middle blocker Xu Yunli and Opposite hitter Zhang Lei.

Serbia staged a 3-1 run to catch up 18-23. But China wasted no chance to take the set 25-18 with Wang's lethal 9 spike and a duo-block with Xu.

The Chinese started to showcase fatal offense 10 and solid block in the third set, which made it difficult for Brankica Mihajlovic and Milena Rasic to execute. They took the set 25-13.

The determined 11 Chinese exhibited ever higher quality play plus the powerful service of Wang, while the Serbians still could not find the way to catch up with the crafty 12 quick attack. With an attack mistake, Serbia surrendered the fourth set and the match 25-12.

China will play Turkey on Monday, who win the latest game 3-1 between the two at the World Grand Prix Finals in June.

"Turkey is also one of the stronger teams in Europe. We lost in the most recent game and we have had some targeted training, so let's see how it works," said Yu.

Earlier in the morning, Japan harvested an easy win over Algeria 25-15, 25-14, 25-7 in the opener of the event.

Besides Serbia, China will play in the same pool in London along with defending champion Brazil, world No.1 U.S., Turkey and South Korea. Italy, Russia, Japan, Algeria, the Dominican Republic and host Britain make up the other six-team pool. The top four teams to emerge out of each pool will play the quarterfinals.