Qatar's Ahmed Tijan shoots to score against Switzerland during the Pool C Beach Volleyball match played at the Shiokaze Park in Tokyo, yesterday. Qatar's Cherif and Ahmed defeated the Swiss duo, Heidrich and Gerson 21-17, 21-16.
Tokyo: Living up to expectations, Qatar’s top beach volleyball duo of Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan began their Tokyo 2020 Olympics campaign on a high note beating Swiss pair of Adrian Heidrich and Mirco Gersonin in straight sets in their opening Group C match, yesterday.
The Team Qatar stars continued with their fine form after a solid performance on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour since the start of the 2021 season, defeating their opponents 21-17, 21-16 at the Shiokaze Park in Tokyo. The victory gave them the top spot in the group with a point ratio of 1.2727.
In their next match on July 28, Cherif and Tijan will take on Italy’s Adrian Carambula and Enrico Rossi, who suffered a 2-0 (21-18, 21-19) defeat at the hands of USA’s Jake Gibb and Tri Bourne yesterday.
Meanwhile, in one of the most anticipated matches, silver medallists of the last Olympic Games, Italy’s Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo defeated silver medallists of the last edition of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship, Germany’s Julius Thole and Clemens Wickler 2-1 (19-21, 21-19 15-13) in Pool F.
“It was a tough match. It was very close and I don’t know what in detail made the difference. Maybe we did something better or we were just luckier,” Nicolai told Volleyball World after the game.
“For sure, both teams deserved the win. Today we won and we are happy for that.”
Also in that pool, earlier yesterday, Poland’s Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak dominated the Japan’s, Yusuke ‘Gottsu’ Ishijima and Katsuhiro Shiratori, on the way to a 2-0 (21-15, 21-14) win.
In one of the day’s most interesting matches, three sets were needed to determine the winner between the Brazilian pairing of former world champion Evandro Goncalves and defending Olympic champ Bruno Schmidt and Marco Grimalt and Esteban Grimalt of Chile. Brazil won the first set.
However, the Chilean cousins fought their way back to level the match and push it to a tie-breaker. Evandro and Bruno Schmidt, however, did not allow their opponents to achieve a complete turnaround and claimed the decider to win the match by 2-1 (21-15, 16-21, 15-12).
