The Road To Beijing Athlete Update.

Sport Larry Godfrey's through to the last sixteen in the individual archery. As the BBC describes, "the Bristolian bowman breezed through the first round with a 6-0 victory over Emdadul Haque Milon of Bangladesh, before dispatching Mexico's Juan Rene Serrano 7-1 in the last 32 later in the day."

He'll go again on Friday. I think.

Meanwhile as a fringe event, I was up as late as I could last night (around midnight) watching the British women's volleyball team battling against the African champions Algeria. As has often been the case at these events, in sports I'm less familiar with, it was the commentary which drew me in, as they enthusiastically explained that what we were watching was a historic moment for British women's volleyball.

Never having been in the Olympics before and ranked sixty-nine in the world the commentators became increasingly excited at the prospect of this team winning a set, of that being a massive achievement and I found myself cheering any point and in the event they did take the first set. Algeria pulled back to draw level and then looked guaranteed to win the match.

At that point I went to bed, having seen the team achieve what the commentators said they'd entered the Olympics to do, only to wake up this morning and find that they'd won the match 22-25 25-19 23-25 25-19 15-8, fighting their way back to level scoring in the fourth set before trashing Algeria in the fifth. Part of me wishes I'd struggled to stay awake, but it was a nice start to the day.

These are the kinds of stories which tend be overlooked in the medal rush. In some sports even being in the Olympics is an achievement, or winning a match, or beating an apparently insurmountable opponent, that's the dream. Even if this team can't beat Italy in their next match tomorrow and don't progress, they've already lived some kind of a dream in front of home crowd and we should be pleased for them.

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