Unforgettable day for American women

Mike Celizic

BEIJING - So fair and foul and foul and fair a day we have not seen. Shakespeare penned that line to open MacBeth, but it applies perfectly to the day experienced by America’s Olympic women’s teams on Thursday. It was triumph followed by heartbreak followed by misery followed by ecstasy, a long and grinding day that reminded us why there is no real-life drama better than sports.

It was ladies’ day at the Olympics, the day on which four U.S. women’s teams were going for the gold, a day that was to confirm Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh as the greatest duo to ever mine gold in the sand and to crown the softball team as one of sports’ greatest dynasties, a day on which water polo would force its way into America’s list of favorite sports and the women of soccer would try not to lose too badly to mighty Brazil.

May-Treanor and Walsh came through in the first gold-medal match of the day. Playing a Chinese team in pouring rain and in front of a rabid hometown crowd, the undisputed queens of the sand proved that for them, life’s a beach. They became the first pair to win beach volleyball in two straight Olympics and ran their winning streak to 108 straight matches. As in Athens four years ago, they won gold without losing a single set.

It was a great start to what promised to be a day that would make everyone forget about all the disappointments piling atop one another in track and field. Thursday was no different than other days there, as Allyson Felix of the United States joined the list of sprinters who couldn’t beat the Jamaicans — this time in the women’s 200. To add insult to outrage, both the men’s and women’s 4x100-meter relay teams dropped their batons in preliminary competition, eliminating themselves from medal contention.

But no matter how badly things went in the Bird’s Nest, fans of Team USA figured they could always take solace in the women’s softball team, which was poised to win their fourth and final Olympic gold medal and establish itself as perhaps the most powerful Olympic dynasties of all time.

Softball is gone after this year, a victim, it is said, of the American domination of the sport since it was introduced in 1996. Fans of irony will appreciate then what happened Thursday: the United States lost to Japan.

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The softball loss was one of those things you expected to see about the same time Pat Dobson declares the Flying Spaghetti Monster to be his personal savior. If there’s a more shocking loss in the history of Olympic team sports, I’m not sure what it is. I’d say the American’s losing the basketball gold in 1972 to the Soviets, but that game was stolen by the most blatant example of horrendous officiating ever seen outside of a boxing ring, so it doesn’t count.

The Americans had Cat Osterman, the best pitcher in the world, on the mound. And she gave up two runs before the game was four innings old. Osterman probably hasn’t given up two runs since tee ball. The Americans got one back, but despite twice loading the bases with one out, they couldn’t get another. The Japanese tacked on an insurance run, courtesy of bad fielding by the United States, but the final score didn’t matter, only the result did.

The field was already wet with rain that had delayed the game. It got even wetter afterwards with the tears of a team that had carried their country’s colors for so many years with so much dignity and grace and excellence.

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