Online BlogSite

BEIJING — Reigning Olympic champions Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh still have three days left until they begin their title defense, but they’ve already squared off with a pair of past Olympic medalists. On Thursday, the world’s No. 1 women’s team was joined on the practice court by Karch Kiraly, 1996 Olympic gold medalist, and Mike Dodd, 1996 Olympic silver medalist. May-Treanor and Walsh are always looking for challenging training partners, so Kiraly and Dodd gave it a go.

“We never have (teamed up before),” Dodd said about his partnership with Kiraly. “But we have the last two days here, and we’d be a pretty formidable women’s team, I think.”

May-Treanor and Walsh are in the midst of a 101-match, 18-tournament winning streak, so stiff competition is hard to come by. “We’re not only a good practice team – by women’s standards — we’re as good a team as they’re going to play because we can cover a lot of court. And make them work that much harder,” Dodd said. Unlike a sport such as wrestling, where the athletes are allowed to bring a partner specifically for training, beach volleyball players commonly try to schedule workouts with fellow competitors. The 48 total teams in Beijing are split up into 12 pools (24 teams and six pools per gender), so they’ll generally scrimmage a team they won’t face in the preliminary rounds.

Dodd, 50, is in Beijing as the coach of the No. 2 U.S. men’s team of Jake Gibb and Sean Rosenthal, while Kiraly, 47, is a commentator for NBC. They appeared to get a little more winded than May-Treanor and Walsh during the one-hour  session, but did offer the women a challenge.

“Karch probably can (hit harder than they’re used),” Dodd said. “My shoulder’s not so good. I’m probably hitting maybe as good as a woman, or maybe a little less. But good enough — high enough angles and shots. My blocking and defense are better than a woman’s.” Rest of the U.S.

Thursday was the third straight day of practice for May-Treanor and Walsh, but the first for the No. 1 men’s team in the world, Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser. They practiced on a court adjacent to May-Treanor and Walsh’s — less than 12 hours after stepping off the plane. “Our flight got in at about 10:30 (Wednesday) night,” Dalhausser said. “After all the processing we have to go through, we got to bed about 1.”

The duo opted to dig right into a training schedule to get acclimated to Beijing as fast as possible. Rogers and Dalhausser’s first match is Saturday at 9 p.m. local time (9 a.m. ET).