Volleyball-Brazil's women end Turkey's dreams of bronze
Paris 2024 Olympics - Volleyball - Women's Bronze Medal Match - Brazil vs Turkey - South Paris Arena 1, Paris, France - August 10, 2024. Team Brazil celebrates winning the match. REUTERS/Annegret Hilse
PARIS :Brazil denied Turkey a first Olympic medal in women's volleyball when the South American side won the bronze medal match 3-1 at the Paris Games on Saturday.
The 25-21 27-25 22-25 25-15 victory gave Brazil, runners-up at the Tokyo Games, their third bronze in Olympic women's volleyball, taking them to joint highest in the all-time medals table with six.
Gabriela Guimaraes led the way for Brazil with a game-high 28 points, while Thaisa de Menezes - a twice-Olympic champion who came out of retirement last year - had 17 with seven blocks.
"This means a lot to us," Guimaraes said. "We put in a lot of work till now. We were so frustrated not to be in the final tonight and to be fighting for the gold medal.
"It is not easy to come back after losing in the semi-finals, but the team stayed together."
Just as in the previous games in Paris, Turkey's attack flowed through tournament top scorer Melissa Vargas, who scored 26 points in the match, but that also underlined the lack of balance in their squad.
Turkey battled their way to a set point in the second but Brazil fought back and took a 2-0 lead when they could not deal with a Guimaraes spike.
"We were 24-23 ahead and we made a mistake on our serve. We had already lost a set in this way," Turkey coach Daniele Santarelli said.
"We can be happy, even if it is hard to say right now. We really wanted to take a medal, but the best team won today."
The third set was tied at 15-15 before Turkey raised their game, racing into the lead and taking it, giving themselves hope of a comeback.
But Brazil were in no mood to hang around in the fourth as Guimaraes and De Menezes took them home, with the latter fittingly applying the final touch to make a block on match point and clinch the bronze before she retired again.
"Making her a three-times Olympic champion was a big motivation for us," Brazil's Ana Da Silva said. "Before this match, I told her that since she didn't have a bronze medal, that was the one we were going to get her."
