In a remake of the previous Elite16 final in Hamburg in August, Brazil’s Eduarda Santos Lisboa (Duda) & Ana Patricia Ramos and United States’ Taryn Kloth & Kristen Nuss will meet again in the final of the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Elite16 event in Paris, starting at 15:00 local time (13:00 UTC) on Sunday. Last year’s Paris winners Katja Stam & Raisa Schoon of the Netherlands and Marta Menegatti & Valentina Gottardi of Italy will battle for the women’s bronze at 12:30 (11:30).

• Watch the Beach Pro Tour Paris Elite16 main draw live on VBTV.

Top-seeded Ana Patricia & Duda, who had cruised through Pool A undefeated, continued their winning streak through Saturday’s direct elimination matches. The reigning world champions and FIVB World Ranking leaders started their day with a quarterfinal victory over the previous world champion Melissa Humana-Paredes of Canada and her current partner Brandie Wilkerson, a silver medallist of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship in 2022. The South Americans completely dominated the first set. In the second, they ran off with a four-point lead, but the North Americans managed to catch up, only to lose by the narrowest of margins in the end. Duda was the best scorer of the match with 20 points, including four aces.

In their semifinal, the Brazilians met 11^th-seeded Stam & Schoon, who had eliminated Tokyo 2020 Olympic bronze medallists Taliqua Clancy & Mariafe Artacho Del Solar of Australia in a eighthfinal and the world’s number two Sara Hughes & Kelly Cheng of the United States in a quarterfinal. Ana Patricia & Duda mastered an emphatic of the Dutch pair to advance to the gold medal match. Ana Patricia produced the match high of 19 points, including three aces, while Duda added another 15, including two aces and two kill blocks.

It is the fifth Elite16 final the Brazilian standouts reach this year. They won three of the previous four, including Hamburg.

To second-seeded Nuss & Kloth, who had won their pool without dropping a set, the afternoon offered a three-set quarterfinal battle with former world and Olympic champion Laura Ludwig of Germany and her current teammate Louisa Lippmann. The Germans wiped out a five-set deficit to win the first set. The second was a rollercoaster before the Americans took the upper hand to level the score and went on to dominate the tie-breaker on the way to a victory. While Lippmann impressed with four aces and two kill blocks towards a 25-point tally, Nuss topped that with a 26-point match high. A few hours earlier, Ludwig & Lippmann had disposed of reigning European champions Nina Brunner & Tanja Huberli of Switzerland in a three-set eighthfinal.

In the last women’s match of the say, Nuss & Kloth celebrated a shutout of Italy’s Marta Menegatti & Valentina Gottardi. After trailing throughout the first set, the Italians stormed the second on a 3-0 run, chasing a comeback, but the Americans recovered to close the match by a solid margin. Nuss led the way with 22 points, including two aces. To reach the semifinal, 10^th-seeded Menegatti & Gottardi produced a sweep of their quarterfinal against strong Brazilians Barbara Seixas & Carol Solberg.

The Paris gold medal match will be Nuss & Kloth’s third final on this year’s Beach Pro Tour.

VW Beach Pro Tour Paris Elite16: schedule and results

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