Anders Mol and Christian Sørum continue to have an excellent Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour 2023 season as the Norwegians secured their sixth semifinal appearance in as many events at the Montréal Elite16 on Saturday.

Besides the reigning Olympic and world champions, will compete in the medal rounds of the tournament held at the Notre Dame Island on Sunday Brazil’s Evandro Gonçalves/Arthur Lanci, Italy’s Adrian Carambula/Alex Ranghieri and USA’s Andy Benesh/Miles Partain.

• Watch the Beach Pro Tour Montréal Elite16 matches live on VBTV

Norwegians and Brazilians will clash in the first semifinal, scheduled to start at 09:30 local time (13:30 UTC), with Italians and Americans dueling one hour later. The gold medal match in Montréal is scheduled for 17:00 local time (21:00 UTC), with the contest for bronze beginning at 14:30 local time (18:30 UTC).

The 2022 Beach Pro Tour champions, Mol and Sørum have not only made it to the semifinals in each Elite16 event they played this year, but also made it to the gold medal match in all of them, claiming the title in Doha and Ostrava and taking silver in Tepic, Uberlândia and Gstaad. Going back to last year, the Beach Volley Vikings are now on a ten-tournament semifinal streak, with their last absence dating back to 11 months ago, in Hamburg, where they were forced to forfeit matches due to an injury.

One of the four pool winners in Montréal on Friday, the Norwegians started the elimination rounds in the quarterfinals and handled Dutch Olympic medalists Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen in straight sets (21-19, 21-18) in their only match of the day to advance.

“We’ve played the Dutch a lot these last few years and they’ve beat us quite a few times, so it feels good to get another win,” Mol reacted. “It’s always a battle with Alex and Robert and I’m happy that we made it to the semifinals again. I think we served a little bit better and I’m really proud of the team. It’s really nice to be here in Canada and the atmosphere has been great.”

Beach Pro Tour Montréal Elite16 – Match Schedule and Results

Their next opponents, Evandro and Arthur had to play a pair of matches on Saturday and delivered solid performances on both. The Brazilians were strong against Americans Miles Evans and Chase Budinger in the Round of 12, producing a 2-0 (21-19, 21-19) victory, and did even better in the quarterfinals, knocking out Tokyo Olympic bronze medalists Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan of Qatar also in straight sets (21-18, 21-18).

The Brazilians were the only semifinalists to play two matches in Montréal on Saturday as Carambula/Ranghieri and Partain/Benesh also won their pools and started the day directly in the quarterfinals.

The Italians advanced to the semifinals with a sweep (21-18, 21-14) of Germans Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler while the Americans, fresh from winning the Gstaad Elite16 earlier this month, needed all three sets (23-25, 21-13, 15-10) to overcome Brazilians Vitor Felipe and Renato Lima.

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