With six Olympians and two teams that started the tournament in the qualifier, the men’s semifinals of this week’s Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Challenge event held in Alanya, Türkiye, were set on Saturday.

Scheduled for 10:00 and 11:00 local time (7:00 and 8:00 GMT) on Sunday, the decisive matches at the Beach Sports Center facility will have Czechia’s Ondřej Perušič/David Schweiner vs. Brazil’s George Wanderley/Saymon Barbosa and France's Téo Rotar/Arnaud Gauthier/Rat vs. Australia’s Mark Nicolaidis/Izac Carracher. The bronze medal match is scheduled for 19:00 (16:00 GM), with the final taking place one hour later.

• Watch the Beach Pro Tour Alanya Challenge live on VBTV

A new team on the Beach Pro Tour in 2025, George, a Paris Olympian, and Saymon are set to make their first semifinal appearance as partners. The campaign in Alanya, which started on Wednesday’s qualifier and has six victories in as many matches, is by far the best the two have had as partners so far, as in the previous tournaments they took 19^th at the Saquarema Elite and 25^th at both the Yucatán Challenge and the Brasília Elite.

On Saturday, the Brazilians continued to perform at a high level in Türkiye, overcoming Austrians Christoph Dressler and Philipp Waller 2-1 (15-21, 21-15, 15-12) in the Round of 16 and Germans Sven Winter and Lukas Pfretzschner 2-0 (21-18, 21-17) in the quarterfinals.

Their semifinal opponents, reigning world champions Perušič and Schweiner also played twice, but took a different path to the semifinals, starting the day with a two-set (21-17, 21-19) victory over Ukrainians Sergiy Popov and Eduard Reznik in Round of 16 and ending it with a tie-breaker in the quarterfinals, where they overcame Austrians Tim Berger and Timo Hammarberg in the tie-breaker (22-20, 25-27, 15-11).

Beach Pro Tour Alanya Challenge – Match Schedule & Results

French continue undefeated

Rotar and Gauthier-Rat, who also played in the qualifier on Wednesday, get to the semifinals undefeated too, but, unlike the Brazilians, they made it there with just five victories as they got to skip the first round of the qualifier. The French, who became partners in 2025 as well, will play for their second medals together after they took bronze in Xiamen last month.

The two started the day in the Round of 16 with a hard-fought two-set (21-19, 24-22) victory over compatriots Rémi Bassereau and Calvin Aye and were more dominant in the quarterfinals, where they eliminated Americans Miles Evans and Chase Budinger in straight sets (21-18, 21-12).

Paris Olympians Nicolaidis and Carracher, who had to go through the Round of 24 on Friday, needed to play as many as six sets on Saturday in Alanya as both their Round of 16 victory over German Olympic medalists Clemens Wickler and Nils Ehlers (12-21, 21-18, 15-10) and their quarterfinal triumph against Brazilians Renato Lima and Pedro Oliveira (21-16, 19-21, 15-10) were earned in the tie-breaker.

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