Canadian accuses Brazilian of faking injury

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Sydney: Canada's John Child accused Brazilian beach volleyball player Ricardo Santos of faking an injury at a crucial point during an ill-tempered Olympic quarter-final at Sydney's Bondi Beach on Sunday.

Ricardo and teammate Ze Marco went on to win the marathon 81-minute match 15-13 to advance to the semi-finals against Jorg Ahmann and Axel Hager of Germany but their tactics upset the Canadian pair of Child and Mark Heese, 1996 bronze medallists in Atlanta.

Ricardo fell to the sand in agony after he and Child appeared to brush each other at the net with the Brazilians leading 4-0. Ricardo claimed he had been hit by Child but the referee disagreed, awarding the point to the Canadians and issuing the South American a yellow card for time wasting.

"I contacted him very minimally under the neck, if at all, and he went down to try to get a point," Child said. "That's not good volleyball etiquette so I let him know about it."

'Playing canada is stressful'

Ricardo said the Canadians were just moaning because they lost. "We have often played against the Canadians and the play is slow. They complain about that. We have nothing against them but sometimes it is stressful," he said.

The Brazilian pair will meet Ahmann and Hager in Sunday afternoon's semi-finals after the Germans beat Fabio Diez and Javier Bosma of Spain 16-14.

The Spaniards pulled off the upset of the tournament when they beat Brazilian world champions Jose Loiola and Emanuel Rego on Friday but came up just short against the Germans.

Miguel Maia and Joao of Portugal clawed their way back from a five-point deficit to beat Swiss brothers Paul and Martin Laciga 15-11 to reach Sunday's second semifinal.

The Portuguese pair, who finished fourth in Atlanta, won the last nine points in a row after trailing 11-6 to advance to a meeting with Dain Blanton and Eric Fonoimoana after they defeated Kevin Wong and Robert Heidger 15-3 in an all-American showdown.

"We made some mistakes in the first few minutes but we turned the game around," Maia said. "We have been training for four years and we are ready to win."

The oldest of the two Laciga brothers, 25-year-old Paul, blamed himself for the loss. "I thought we were going to win...but in 10 minutes I made eight mistakes," he said.

Blanton and Fonoimoana hardly raised a sweat as they disposed of Wong and Heidger in just 31 minutes, the quickest match of the day. "It's one thing to be confident and another thing to be arrogant," Blanton said. "We were confident."

(c) Reuters Limited.