All three of the pool leaders that suffered upsets during the pool stage of the Rio de Janeiro Elite on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour recovered with convincing victories in their round-of-18 games on Friday and advanced to Saturday’s round of 12.

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The number one team in the FIVB World Ranking, top-seeded Anders Mol & Christian Sorum of Norway, mastered a 2-0 (21-11, 21-15) sweep of their game against Brazil’s Andre Stein & Renato Lima. Next, the Beachvolley Vikings will face second-seeded Stefan Boermans & Yorick de Groot in a titanic clash for a spot in the quarterfinals.

Third-seeded Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan, on the other hand, set up a round-of-12 encounter with fourth-seeded Latvians Martins Plavins & Kristians Fokerots after a 2-0 (21-14, 21-18) shutout of Czech qualifiers Tadeas Trousil & Jiri Sedlak.

Fifth-seeded Steven van de Velde & Alexander Brouwer of the Netherlands produced a 2-0 (21-16, 21-16) victory over Switzerland’s Marco Krattiger & Leo Dillier and moved on to a match against France’s Teo Rotar & Arnaud Gauthier-Rat.

In one of the more unpredictable fixture of the round of 18, Cuba’s Noslen Diaz & Jorge Alayo came back from a set down against last year’s silver medalists Nicolas Capogrosso & Tomas Capogrosso of Argentina to claim a 2-1 (19-21, 21-16, 15-13) win and knock the number four team in the world out of contention. Diaz & Alayo will go against young Austrian qualifiers Timo Hammarberg & Tim Berger next.

The only other three-setter of the round was produced in Brazilian qualifiers George Wanderley & Saymon Barbosa’s hard-fought 2-1 (26-24, 16-21, 15-13) victory over Norwegian qualifiers Mathias Berntsen & Hendrik Mol. On Saturday, George & Saymon will take on American Olympians Miles Evans & Chase Budinger.

Australian Olympians Mark Nicolaidis & Izac Carracher also advanced in the tournament after a 2-0 (21-19, 21-17) shutout of American Olympians Miles Partain & Andrew Benesh. Sixth-seeded home favorites – Brazilian Olympians Evandro Oliveira & Arthur Mariano Lanci – will be their next opponents.

The round of 12 will get underway at 09:00 local time (12:00 UTC) on Saturday, to be followed by the quarterfinal round later in the day.

VW Beach Pro Tour Rio de Janeiro Elite: match schedule and results

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