TOKYO — Every journey up the Olympic mountain comes with a series of incidents that, in retrospect, seem meticulously designed but were in fact just rolls of the dice that paid off.
Take the United States women’s volleyball team. It first qualified for the Olympic tournament in 1980, but missed those Games because of an American-led boycott. It has been chasing an Olympic title ever since.
Despite a collegiate infrastructure that churns out volleyball talent on an assembly line, the U.S. women had never won the gold medal. They came close twice, winning silvers in 2008 in Beijing and again at the 2012 London Games and a bronze in Rio in 2016, before finally reaching the top step on Sunday in Tokyo, 3-0 winners over Brazil.