April Ross and Alix Klineman are a win away from playing for beach volleyball gold in Tokyo. It’s a spectacular payoff after a gamble that left them unsure if they’d make the Olympics at all.
TOKYO—Beach volleyball star April Ross needed a new partner after the Rio Olympics, and when she found the perfect one—an unproven but brilliant player named Alix Klineman—it created an entirely new problem.
They could either wind up as America’s best chance at gold in Tokyo or miss the Olympics entirely because of how Klineman’s inexperience paved a long road to merely qualifying. It was a spectacular bet that’s already paying off: Ross and Klineman are heading to the semifinals and closing in on a medal.
The Ross-Klineman duo has gone undefeated through its first five matches, dropping just one set with only one match to go before possibly playing for a gold medal. But the most amazing part of their Olympic run isn’t their success at Shiokaze Park. It’s that they made it here. Ross picked an inexperienced partner after running into Klineman at a music festival. They nearly faced disaster en route to qualification until the most incredibly timed fire alarm in beach volleyball history went off. And now they have emerged as Olympic favorites.
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