US Olympic Beach Volleyball 2012: 10 Things You Need to Know About Kerri Walsh

Everyone knows the basics about Kerri Walsh, right?

She's the 6'3" big blocker, the reigning two-time Olympic beach volleyball gold medalist, who has stomped the competition along with her longtime partner Misty May-Treanor, of course. They took Athens and Beijing and are set to go for the trifecta in London.

What you may not know is that Walsh is struggling to regain her past glory in the sand and that she and May-Treanor are in the fight of their lives in the 2012 London Games.

Here are 10 more things you need to know about Kerri Walsh as the Olympics begin.

Kerri Walsh hates not being part of the top-seeded team in the world.

Walsh and Misty May-Treanor lost to the Chinese in the final in Moscow on the FIVB World Tour in mid-June 2012, and they are currently seeded third in the Olympic team rankings, behind Brazil and China.

Even worse, in the World Tour rankings, Walsh's team is ranked eighth. "We need to get our competitive mojo back," Walsh told Sports Illustrated.

Brazilians Larissa and Juliana are the top team in the world right now and the front-runners for Olympic gold.

They defeated Walsh and May-Treanor in the 2011 World Championships—the duo's first defeat internationally since 2001.

Following the win, along with their fans, the two went nuts celebrating.

"That loss is still under my skin," Walsh admitted to Sports Illustrated.

If it wasn't bad enough to have two Brazilian teams, the red-hot Chinese duo of Cheng Xue and Zhang Xi as well as a strong team from the Netherlands in the hunt for Olympic gold, Walsh and May-Treanor have to contend with April Ross and Jennifer Kessy, the USA's other strong beach volleyball duo.

The two American teams have been fighting it out for years, with Ross and Kessy coming into the Olympics ranked fifth. And to add insult to injury, Kessy/Ross were just profiled in Elle magazine, which will drive Walsh crazy (see next slide).

Kerri Walsh is completely obsessed with fashion.

She loves to sit in the front row during all of the New York Fashion Week shows and even had an athletic clothing line for a while in 2009, which sadly didn't fly. But at 6'3", she's hard to fit even when she owns the company.

She and Misty May-Treanor played beach volleyball against Shaquille O'Neal on the TV show Shaq Vs. in 2009. They won, proving height isn't everything in beach volleyball. Although, at 7'1", Shaq is only 10 inches taller than 6'3" Kerri, after all.

She had one son in 2009 and a second in 2010 with husband and pro beach volleyball player Casey Jennings. She planned out her pregnancies so she could be back in top form by the 2012 Olympics.

Walsh and Jennings train together, and the kids come along. Joey and Sundance Jennings are going to the London 2012 Olympics with their mom, too.

Walsh is loaded, being one of the few female beach volleyball players to reach $2 million in career earnings.

Plus, she hauls in even more with sponsorships from Oakley, Acer, Wilson, Pampers (that mom thing again) and others.

And forget Wheaties, because Kerri's on the Kellogg's Corn Flakes box this summer.

Walsh is 33, and she's had four surgeries on her right (hitting) shoulder. So watch for her to always be crisscrossed in multi-colored Kinesiology Tape in every set she plays. She's even the poster child for KT Tape, with her image on the front of the box.

Misty May-Treanor is 34, and after a popped Achilles tendon that happened during her try on Dancing with the Stars, she's got her share of aches and pains, too.

Walsh met Jon Gruden, the 2002 Super Bowl-winning coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, in New York recently and asked for his advice about how she and May-Treanor could get back to the top of their game.

As she told the Mercury News, the coach gave her a simple answer.

"He said, sometimes lack of confidence is an excuse for something else. Just go out and play."

Women in the 2012 Olympics will now be allowed to wear more than just the regulation bikini when they play, with new rules passed by the International Volleyball Federation.

The rule allowing women to cover up more of their bodies was mostly put in place to allow players from countries where modest attire is an everyday requirement to play, but Walsh isn't having it.

As she said to USA Today, "[My bikini] is something I really feel comfortable with. I'm not a sex symbol, I'm an athlete. I want to be streamlined out there."