Durish & Koenig win Xiamen to make it four in four on the Beach Pro Tour

22-year-old Americans Alexis Durish & Audrey Koenig topped the women’s podium at the Xiamen Challenge on Sunday to collect their fourth medal in four appearances on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour. So far, they have won 23 of the 24 matches they have ever played on the Tour and have collected three gold medals (2025 Geneva Futures, 2026 Bhubaneswar Challenge and 2026 Xiamen Challenge) and one bronze (2025 Montpellier Futures).

• Watch the Xiamen Challenge on the Beach Volleyball World YouTube channel

Lithuanian Paris 2024 Olympians Monika Paulikiene & Aine Raupelyte settled for silver, matching the best achievement for the pair on the Beach Pro Tour so far. It was their second runner-up finish, after the Tlaxcala Challenge earlier this year, which they added to a collection of two bronze medals.

Another team that graced the court at the last Olympics, France’s Lezana Placette & Alexia Richard, completed the Xiamen podium with bronze. It was the duo’s second Tour medal. The first one was also bronze and also at a Challenge event in China, at Haikou 2024.

Seeded 14^th in the Xiamen Challenge main draw, USA’s Alexis Durish & Audrey Koenig won all six of their matches in China, but it was a rough obstacle course as they had to persevere through as many as four tie-breaker resolutions, including those in the semifinals and in the final. Both of these matches were won in the overtime of the third sets. On Saturday, the Americans squeezed out a 2-1 (21-16, 18-21, 18-16) victory over France’s Lezana Placette & Alexia Richard, seeded 15^th, and on Sunday, they outlasted fourth-seeded Lithuanians Monika Paulikiene & Aine Raupelyte on the way to a 2-1 (21-15, 19-21, 16-14) triumph.

Paulikiene & Raupelyte dropped only a set on the way to the gold medal match. Their winning streak was decorated with a 2-0 (21-9, 24-22) upset of top-seeded home favorites Xia Xinyi & Yan Xu.

Placette & Richard, who started the tournament with four consecutive wins, three of them in three-set matches, recovered from their semifinal loss with a 2-0 (21-10, 27-25) victory over the Chinese team for the bronze.

A total of 47 women’s duos from 23 different federations took part in the Xiamen Challenge. The Nuvali Challenge in the Philippines from May 20 to 24 is the next Beach Pro Tour event of this category.

Beach Pro Tour Xiamen Challenge: all results

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