Third-seeded Elazar & Cuzmiciov survive tough day to make Bhubaneswar eighthfinals

The top seven seeds in the men’s main draw at the Bhubaneswar Challenge on the 2026 Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour safely advanced to Saturday’s eighthfinals, but one of them, third-seeded Israelis Eylon Elazar & Kevin Cuzmiciov, had a long and difficult road on the way on Friday. They were the only one of these top seven seeds that did not win their pool. As a result, they will have a tough encounter with fourth-seeded Englishmen Frederick Bialokoz & Issa Batrane en route to the quarterfinals.

• Watch the Bhubaneswar Challenge on VBTV

For Elazar & Cuzmiciov, Friday’s competition day started with an upset. They lost the Pool C final to 19^th-seeded Jacob Brinck & Nicolai Hovmann of Denmark and failed to book a direct ticket to the second elimination round. The Danes took care of business in straight sets, 2-0 (21-18, 21-19), with the help of six kill blocks from Hovmann. In their sixteenthfinal encounter with 17^th-seeded Gage Basey & Thomas Hurst of the United States, the Israeli pair lost the first set before finally getting on the winning track and turning the match around to a 2-1 (19-21, 21-13, 15-11) victory. The match lasted 53 minutes and it was the longest one of the tournament so far. Elazar led the way with a match-high 25 points, including seven stuffs and three serving aces.

In Saturday’s eighthfinals, Brinck & Hovmann will challenge Ukraine’s Dmytro Kozii & Oleksii Bublyk, while Elazar & Cuzmiciov will take on Bialokoz & Batrane, who lived up to their seeding and topped the final standings in Pool D, but not without a big comeback from a set down in the pool final against Australia’s Oliver Merritt & Jed Walker. Bialokoz emerged as the best scorer of the match with 24 points, including three aces and two blocks, towards a 2-1 (14-21, 21-14, 15-12) victory.

Another two matches were pushed to tie-breaker resolutions on Friday, both in the first knockout round. Slovakia’s Lubos Nemec & Adrian Petruf beat Spain’s Jeene Dimi Nijkamp & Alvaro Viera by 2-1 (21-13, 15-21, 15-9) and are set to face fifth-seeded Norwegians Nils Gunnar Ringoen & Even Stray Aas in the eighthfinals, while Canada’s Luke de Greeff & Tynan Gannett mounted a 2-1 (18-21, 21-9, 15-7) comeback against Ukraine’s Anton Moiseiev & Vitalii Savvin to take on bracket leaders Jakub Sepka & Matyas Dzavoronok of Czechia in the next round.

The highest ranked team of the host nation and the only one that managed to delight the home fans with a win in Bhubaneswar – eighth-seeded Abithan Senthilkumar & Udaya Suriyan Poonthamizhan – lost both their matches on Friday, failed to make the eighthfinals and left India without representatives for the rest of the men’s competition. The final standings in their Pool H were topped by ninth-seeded Lithuanians Arnas Rumsevicius & Karolis Palubinskas, who are now set to meet USA’s Alex Ukkelberg & Riley Owen in a duel for a quarterfinal berth.

Second-seeded Evan Cory & Derek Bradford of USA, sixth-seeded Tomas Semerad & Adam Stocek of Czechia and seventh-seeded Joppe Van Langendonck & Kyan Vercauteren of Belgium won their pools and progressed to eighthfinal encounters with Turkiye’s Yusuf Ozdemir & Batuhan Kuru, Latvia’s Olivers Bulgacs & Markuss Graudins and Australia’s Merritt & Walker, respectively.

Men’s action in Bhubaneswar will resume on Saturday at 08:00 local time (02:30 UTC).

Beach Pro Tour Bhubaneswar Challenge: schedule and results

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