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U.S. women shock Cuba in volleyball

By Bill Dwyre
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BEIJING -- The U.S. women’s volleyball team, still looking for its first gold medal to go with silver in Los Angeles in 1984 and a bronze in Barcelona in ‘92, got to within one victory of that with a shocking three-set mastery of heavily favored Cuba here Thursday afternoon at the Capital Gymnasium.

Cuba had won the teams’ first meeting in pool play, 25-15, 26-24, 25-17.

The U.S. -- coached by the one person who knows first-hand about this gold medal stuff, (Jenny) Lang Ping, who was on China’s ’84 gold medal team -- totally turned the tables on the Cubans, winning, 25-20, 25-16, 25-17.

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The U.S. will play the winner of the China-Brazil game, which will be played Thursday night, for the gold on Saturday.

-- Bill Dwyre

Olympics Blog
Bill Dwyre

Bill Dwyre was a three-times-weekly sports columnist for the Los Angeles Times from 2006-15. Before that, he was sports editor of the paper for 25 years. Dwyre was named national editor of the year by the National Press Foundation in 1985 for the paper’s coverage of the ’84 Olympics and winner of the Red Smith Award in 1996 by the Associated Press Sports Editors for sustained excellence in sports journalism. He was sports editor of the Milwaukee Journal from 1973 to 1981, when he joined The Times. Dwyre was named National Headliner Award winner in 1985, sportswriter of the year in Wisconsin in 1980 and sportswriter of the year in California in 2009.

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