The Chinese women's volleyball team defeated the reigning Olympic champions, the United States, in a thrilling match.

The U.S. women's volleyball team faced a challenging start in their Olympic title defense, losing the first two sets to China. However, they were able to prevent the situation from escalating into a disaster.

China's eventual five-set victory, with both teams scoring the same number of points, provided a sense of relief for the reigning champions. Setter Jordyn Poulter expressed pride in their team's resilience, highlighting the difficulty of coming back from a 0-2 deficit and competing fiercely in the fifth set.

She emphasized the importance of learning from this experience, identifying areas for improvement, and maintaining a steady progression without peaking too early.

There was certainly no cause for concern in that regard.

“We obviously didn’t have the start that we wanted, but the third, fourth and fifth were really promising,” blocker Haleigh Washington said. “Going five with a team like China is incredible, and squeezing out any point we can get in the pool is going to be really important for us. And so I’m just happy the way that we just fought.”

The United States women's national volleyball team will compete in their second preliminary round match on Wednesday against Serbia, followed by a meeting with the host nation, France, on Sunday to conclude the pool play stage. The top two teams from each of the three pools, along with the top two third-place teams, will progress to the knockout round. The criteria for determining the rankings will include match victories, total points accumulated, and set and point ratios.

“It just highlights how thin the margins are and how we have to take care of some of these little plays,” coach Karch Kiraly said. “And I want to give our team a huge amount of credit for fighting back. It is not easy to come back from down 2-0 against a really good China team.”

The American team had a strong performance in Tokyo, only losing one match during pool play and not dropping a set in the knockout stage on their way to securing their first-ever gold medal. Despite being ranked fifth in the world and having eight players from the 2021 championship team, they faced a tough challenge in Paris against the sixth-ranked China.

China won the first two sets convincingly with scores of 25-20 and 25-19, but the Americans fought back to win the third set 25-17. They managed to tie the game at 13-all after trailing 13-10, thanks to a challenged ball that just caught the Chinese end line.

The crowd was energized for the first time, chanting "U-S-A!" as the Americans took the lead at 17-14. China called a timeout at 21-20 to regroup, but the Americans finished strong by scoring the last four points, including an ace from Washington to secure the set point.

On the winner, Washington’s dig set up Andrew Drews’ spike.

In the tiebreaker, China once again assumed the leading position. The American team managed to stave off two match points before Zhu Ting’s spike deflected off blocker Andrea Drews, resulting in China’s victory.