The Canadian Olympic Trials were held at Ashbridges Bay in Toronto on July 7th. The two matches determined which teams would be representing Canada at the London Olympics. 

Josh Binstock and Martin Reader qualified for the men.

And Annie Martin and Marie-Andree Lessard qualified on the women's side.

It was such an exciting day of awesome volleyball!

You can catch up with them on their blogs and websites:

http://www.lessardmartin.com/

http://martinreader.blogspot.ca/

http://www.road2london2012.com/http:/www.road2london2012.com/start-of-my-olympic-journal

The Beach Volleyball in London starts on Saturday, July 28. 

Here's a link to some of the info: http://www.london2012.com/beach-volleyball/about/

After the trials, Jamie and I got to spend some time off in Toronto, so I was able to catch up with friends. 

Dinner at the CN Tower with Austin

My roommate, Alex!

Vanessa's wedding shower :)


Then Jamie and I flew out to Vancouver where we set up camp in our second home... aka Mila's apartment. 

Mila and Jamie

We competed in the Vancouver Open July 14-15. 

Kitsilano Beach

Game plan 

It was a really successful tournament, we ended up coming in 2nd! 

Moscow, Rome, Home

Jamie at the courts in Moscow

                                                                                               



So after our tournament in Seoul, we flew to Moscow and Rome for the last two events on the World Tour in an effort to qualify for the Olympics. We didn't manage to pull out a good enough result at either event, so our 2012 Olympic run is officially over. 

The event in Rome was pretty interesting because not only was the venue amazing and beautiful, we were so close to qualifying and becoming the 2nd ranked team in Canada. Our first match was in the centre court stadium against Japan. We did our regular warm up and when the ref blew the whistle for the match to start, Japan still had not shown up! That meant we won by default and advanced to the last round of qualification. This time we were matched up against the top team from Great Britain. If we had managed to win that game, we would have earned enough points to move up from being the 3rd ranked team in Canada to 2nd. 

Rome venue

Trevi Fountain

As it stands, Annie Martin and Marie-Andree Lessard are the 2nd team in Canada, following Heather Bansley and Liz Maloney. The top 2 teams got the chance to compete in the Continental Final in Mexico. The winner of this tournament earns a berth to the Olympics. Amazingly, both Canadian men and women won the tournament, so Canada will have one team from each gender represented for beach volleyball.

In order to determine which team gets to go to the Olympics, the two teams from each gender will play a match. This should be such an exciting day, everyone should come down to Ashbridges Bay to watch!! The women will compete at 1pm and the men at 3pm on Saturday, July 7th. See you there!!