Gstaad is the last of the four-star events on the World Tour schedule this year. The FIVB did a great job of putting a schedule together for the Olympic qualification push, but the usually busy months on the World Tour will go quiet after this week. After the Olympics, only the World Tour Finals in Rome remains for the top flight level. That means this isn’t only the last chance to prove a point before the Olympics, it is the last chance to make money on the world stage for a while, as well.
The week started with very heavy rain and some hail, but the sun was shining in beautiful Gstaad today. Rain is in the forecast for the final two days of the tournament though, so that may play a role in the outcome.
Some of the Olympic bound teams are making bold statements about their prospects in Tokyo. Other teams that missed Olympic qualification are signaling to their federations that they have ambitions for Paris 2024.
Women’s quarterfinalists
The women’s tournament has reached the quarterfinal stage. Of the eight teams remaining, six will be playing in Tokyo next week. Three teams, Agatha Bednarczuk & Duda Santos Lisboa, Sarah Pavan & Melissa Humana-Paredes and Nina Betschart & Tanja Hüberli have been very strong all year while Brazil’s Ana Patricia & Rebecca Silva, Latvia’s Anastasija Kravcenoka & Tina Graudina and Canada’s Heather Bansley & Brandie Wilkerson have been pretty quiet in 2021. In Gstaad, however, they are making some noise.
Three teams from Brazil are in the final eight. Barbara Seixas de Freitas & Carolina Solberg Salgado won’t be playing in Tokyo due to the limit of two teams per country, but they are enjoying knocking down Olympians this week. They sent home Russia’s Nadezda Makroguzova & Svetlana Kholomina in straight sets and have a chance to knock out Sarah Pavan & Melissa Humana-Paredes tomorrow.
Ana Patricia and Rebecca are finding their form
Ana Patricia and Rebecca slipped from number one in the Olympic rankings at the start of 2021 down to fourth place when qualification ended. After struggling in Cancun and taking a three tournament break from the world tour, they found success on the Brazilian tour at the end of June. This week in Gstaad, they are showing their old form. They will finish no worse than fifth in Switzerland, and a victory over Bansley and Wilkerson will put them into the semifinals. They beat Olympic bound Dutchies Sanne Keizer & Madelein Meppelink in the round of 16 to reach the final eight. It is their first win over a team in the Olympic field since beating Margareta Kozuch & Laura Ludwig at the Doha tournament in March. Ludwing and Kozuch beat them in pool play in Gstaad, but the Brazilians have been perfect since then.
Tina and Anastasija send a message to their Olympic pool
Latvia’s women have had a quiet year because of limited opportunities not poor play. Tina was committed to playing with the University of Southern California in the early part of the year, so their first real chance to compete after consistent training was in Sochi. They got their best ever world tour result in Russia by making the semifinals and finishing fourth. Of course they also had two marquee victories in 2019. Late that summer they won the Euros and more importantly, the Olympic Qualification Tournament. The later put them into the Tokyo field and relieved the pressure of qualification.
Their Olympic group will include recent double gold medalists from the United States, Sarah Sponcil & Kelly Claes, along with Ana Patricia and Rebecca. Today they dominated the Americans (21 – 19, 21 – 14). The two Olympic rivals have only faced each other twice with Latvia winning both times. They are on course to meet Brazil in the semifinals if both teams can win in the quarters. Beating the two best teams in their Olympic pool a few weeks before the tournament would be a huge statement for these two.
Anastasija & Tina are favorites to win their next match against Kinga Wojtasik & Katarzyna Kociolek from Poland. The Poles beat Germany’s Borger and Sude in a big win for them today which puts them deeper into a four-star than they’ve ever been before. Wojtasik & Kociolek were Kravcenoka & Graudina’s opponents in the European championship final in 2019.
Bansley and Wilkerson back on track
Brandie and Heather weren’t always Canada’s second team. Brandie Wilkerson is regarded as one of the world’s best blockers and Heather Bansley took fifth in the last Olympics. In the first year of Olympic qualification, they made the podium four times and won two tournaments. Their national rivals Sarah Pavan (Heather’s partner in Rio 2016) and Melissa Humana-Paredes have taken all the headlines since. This year, Bansley and Wilkerson have picked up a couple of 5th place finishes, but haven’t returned to the Olympic contenders conversation.
Today they took a big step in reversing all of that. Against home team favorites, Anouk Vergé-Dépré and Joana Heidrich they cruised to a 21 – 15, 21 – 15 victory. Ana Patricia and Rebecca stand in the way of making the semifinals tomorrow. That is definitely a match worth watching.
Two very different semifinals for the men
The difference between the two semifinals on the men’s side is pretty striking. The first semifinal pits fellow Olympic gold medal contenders Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan and Viacheslav Krasilnikov & Oleg Stoyanovskiy against each other. The other semi has two teams that are in their first semifinals, Nikita Liamin & Taras Myskiv and Stefan Boermans & Yorick de Groot. Liamin and Myskiv started this week in Russia’s country quota and have already won seven matches.
Two Russian pairs in the final four
Nikita Liamin was an Olympian in 2016 and partnered with Viacheslav Krasilnikov for a season following the Rio games. He is actually the oldest of Russia’s three big blockers and looks like he is having a lot of fun with Myskiv this week. They started their quarterfinal by dropping the first five points of the match against Kantor and Losiak and getting destroyed in set one, 13 -21. They came back with an even more lopsided score in their favor to win the second set 21 – 10 before winning the third.
Viacheslav Krasilnikov & Oleg Stoyanovskiy beat arch rivals Anders Mol and Christian Sorum in the other quarterfinal. See the team of the day post on Instagram for more details.
Boermans and de Groot have been on fire all week. They beat Cherif and Ahmed to win their pool and got past two German teams, Julius Thole & Clemens Wickler and Nils Ehlers & Lars Fluggen to make the semifinals. These two have been fantastic all year and look like they have what it takes to become The Netherlands number one beach volleyball team in the very near future.
Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan won a thrilling quarterfinal against Evandro and Bruno to make their fifth semifinal of the year. Bruno looks very fit and fully recovered from COVID and Evandro is as dangerous as ever. Ahmed and Cherif continue to make jaw dropping plays when they need it most. I’ve said it many times before on this blog, but I really like this team.
Not great Olympic sendoff
Krasilnikov & Stoyanovskiy were nearly eliminated from the group stage, being pushed 22 – 20 by Alexander Walkenhorst & Sven Winter in the third set of the elimination match. Had they lost , they would have been headlining this category. Instead, they are one win away from a medal, such is beach volleyball.
Marco & Esteban Grimalt, on the other hand, were eliminated from the group stage, again. Their 2021 has been truly awful and Gstaad didn’t help things. They head to Tokyo in full speed reverse after a great start to the qualification campaign.
Konstantin Semenov & Ilya Leshukov, Alexander Brouwer & Robert Meeuwsen and Martins Plavins & Edgars Tocs all made it out of their group, but lost in the first round. Seventeenth place isn’t the result they wanted heading into Tokyo. Brouwer and Meewusen were gold medalists one tournament ago, but fell to Sochi gold medalists Piotr Kantor & Bartosz Losiak in three sets. Plavins and Tocs are very fortunate for the Olympic Qualification Tournament victory or they would not be heading to Tokyo at all. Semenov and Leshukov have been very solid of late and they were bounced out by Krasilnikov & Stoyanovskiy in a bad first round draw. I wouldn’t worry much about them.
Fifth place is a good result for most teams, but three consecutive tournaments without a medal for Mol and Sorum leaves the Beachvolley Vikings in a very unusual position as they enter Tokyo. The last time they went three events in a row without a podium was 2018. At that point, they had yet to win their first world tour event. Guess what happened after their 5th place in Espinho, Portugal that year. Yep, they won gold at Gstaad followed by gold in Vienna and Hamburg. These guys are a bit down, but definitely not out.