BEIJING (AP) The five-day battle between Russia and Georgia killed hundreds, if not thousands, left 100,000 without homes and turned an obscure pair of Brazilians in the Olympics' biggest beach party into proxies for a war-torn people they barely know.Okay, they weren't actually from Georgia and had only been there long enough to pick up some passports and do some paperwork, but I think the message is clear: Brazilian mercenaries can beat back the Russians.
With the border war casting sobriety upon an otherwise spring-break style of sport, Cristine Santanna and Andrezza Martins rallied from a first-set blowout to beat Russia in beach volleyball Wednesday. The native Brazilians, who shopped for new citizenship to circumvent a quota of two teams per country, preserved their chance at an Olympic medal and offered their adopted homeland hope for even more.
"We had to give extra for the Georgian people," said Santanna, who made just two short trips to Georgia to apply for a passport. "I give my strength to them. I fight here as they fight there."
"Today," she said, in an odd but moving mixture of President Kennedy at the Berlin Wall and Lou Gehrig at his Yankee Stadium farewell, "I feel like I am a Georgian."
Russia, be careful not to sign any treaties that stipulate land battles be engaged through volleyball as per UN resolution 34.693. I don't like your chances. Georgia, may I suggest you move your government to a sand pit in Beijing, that's the only place it's safe from the tanks roaming your countryside in search of a cease fire.
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