Nina Brunner & Tanja Huberli are set to gain an important edge in the Swiss race for tickets to the women’s Olympic tournament at Paris 2024 this summer. They qualified for Sunday’s gold medal match at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Elite16 event in Tepic and will cross swords with Netherlands’ Katja Stam & Raisa Schoon for the trophy. Brazil’s Andre Stein & George Wanderley made it to the men’s final all the way from Wednesday’s qualifiers and will lock horns with top-seeded Swedes David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig for the gold in Mexico.

· Watch the Tepic Elite16 main draw with your FREE 7-day access to VBTV.

Ninth-seeded Huberli & Brunner continued their impeccable run without a set dropped in Tepic and added two more straight-set wins on Saturday to secure their first podium of the season. In the quarterfinals, the Swiss mastered a 2-0 (21-15, 21-19) victory over fifth-seeded Canadians Melissa Humana-Paredes & Brandie Wilkerson and went on to hammer out a 2-0 (21-17, 21-17) semifinal upset of fourth-seeded Brazilians Barbara Seixas & Carol Solberg. In that match, Brunner fired four aces towards a match-high 17 points, while Huberli impressed with six kill blocks.

Sixth-seeded Stam & Schoon, on the other hand, had to battle through a three-set quarterfinal before eliminating Brazilian qualifiers Taina Bigi & Victoria Lopes on a 2-1 (21-12, 23-25, 15-9) win, with Stam putting away as many as 29 points towards her team’s success. In the semifinals, after winning an extended first set against 10^th-seeded Italians Marta Menegatti & Valentina Gottardi, the Dutch pair managed to get the job done in straight sets for a 2-0 (23-21, 21-10) sweep with the help of four aces from Schoon.

Brazilian stars Andre & George, who had to enter this tournament as the fourth-seeded team in the qualification bracket, won their quarterfinal against the Netherlands’ Stefan Boermans & Yorick de Groot, seeded third in the main draw, by forfeit. In their semifinal, Cuba’s Noslen Diaz & Jorge Alayo, who also started from the qualifiers and made it all the way to the last four at their first-ever Elite16 main draw, took the first set, but the South Americans mounted a 2-1 (19-21, 21-15, 15-12) comeback on eight kill blocks from Andre and a 29-point match high from George.

Ahman & Hellvig had a couple of difficult matches on Saturday, but made it to their sixth consecutive Beach Pro Tour final. After a 2-0 (21-16, 23-21) quarterfinal win over seventh-seeded Michal Bryl & Bartosz Losiak of Poland, the top-seeded Swedes were pushed to a tie-breaker that went deep into overtime in their semifinal against fifth-seeded Germans Clemens Wickler & Nils Ehlers. With a 32-point match high from Hellvig, the Scandinavians celebrated a 2-1 (21-18, 18-21, 20-28) victory.

Sunday’s programme will start with the women’s bronze medal game between Carol & Barbara and Menegatti & Gottardi at 12:30 local time (19:30 UTC). The men’s third place game between Ehlers & Wickler and Diaz & Alayo will start one hour later. Huberli & Brunner will take on Stam & Schoon for the women’s gold at 15:00 (22:00), an hour and a half before Ahman & Hellvig and George & Andre hit the sand for the men’s final.

VW Beach Pro Tour Tepic Elite16: schedule and results

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