Italy is one victory away from making history at the Women's Volleyball World Championships: Turkey advances to the final.

Brazil climbed to third place at the Volleyball World Championships with another tie-break, this time winning. Japan surrendered in a fifth-set tiebreaker (16-14 in the final set) after a match of rare intensity. The clincher in the South American team's favor was Gabi, who was capable of overcoming the Japanese block from every position on the court.

Julio Velasco, the Italian coach, knows how it's done. Because in his career, both men's and women's, he's achieved incredible feats (never dictated by chance) and has managed to digest and process bitter defeats. He and his teams. From the "generation of phenomena" (it was the 1990s) to the fantastic experience with the current team. "I relived the emotions of the Maracanazinho when, with the Italian men's team at the Men's World Championships, we beat Brazil 3-2 (and 15-13 in the tie-break). Turkey? They worked as hard as we did, they earned the World Championship final, and beating them will be anything but easy."

The Italian women's volleyball team is aiming to reach the top step of the world championship, a step they haven't achieved since 2002. After yesterday's epic net battle against Brazil, which ended in a tiebreak (15-13 in the final set), today Velasco's girls will attempt to repeat their success in Paris last summer, when they became Olympic Champions. The tournament kicks off at 2:30 p.m., and on the other side of the net will be Turkey, who defeated Japan 3-1 in the other semifinal.

Record ratings for the Italy-Brazil World Cup semifinal, broadcast live yesterday on Rai 1 and streamed on Rainews.it and RaiPlay. The pre-match (30 minutes before kickoff) drew an 18% share with 1,800,000 viewers, which then increased to 2,300,000 with a 23.8% share during the match, making it the most-watched program of the day and the second most-watched program of the day. Peak viewing on the flagship network was at 4:57 PM, with over 2,600,000 viewers glued to their small screens, 29% of the total audience.