Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 9, 2016 - Playing their second-straight Rio 2016 Olympic Games match at midnight, Americans April Ross and Kerri Walsh Jennings gained the leadership of their pool here Tuesday morning with a win over China’s Fan Wang and Yuan Yue.
Olympic finalists at the London 2012 Summer Games, Ross and Walsh Jennings scored a 2-0 (21-16, 21-9) Pool C win in 35 minutes over previously-unbeaten Wang and Yue. It was Ross and Walsh Jennings' fourth win in five international meetings with the Chinese with the lone setback being at the 2015 FIVB World Championships in the Netherlands.
In the match, Wang and Yue led 8-7 in the first set before the American put together an 8-3 string to take control of the opening set at 15-11. In the second set, Ross and Walsh Jennings broke from a 5-5 tie with a 16-4 run to end the match.
To clinch their group to advance to the elimination rounds as the third-seeded team, the Americans must defeat Isabelle Forrer and Anouk Verge-Depre of Switzerland Wednesday or end up with a better point ratio than any team tying them in Pool C. Ross and Walsh Jennings have out-scored their first two opponents by 32 points while the Swiss are a plus-3 and the Chinese a minus-5.
Ross and Walsh Jennings have won all three international meetings with Forrer and Verge-Depre, who defeated Mariafe Artacho and Nicole Laird of Australia 2-1 (19-21, 21-16, 21-19) Monday in 62 minutes.
