The men’s qualifiers at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Elite16 event in Rio de Janeiro on Wednesday ended in a spectacular fashion. All four matches of the deciding second round were pushed to third-set tie-breaker resolutions as Chile’s Fernando Quintero & Vicente Droguett, Germany’s Philipp Huster & Maximilian Just, England’s Joaquin Bello & Javier Bello and Argentina’s Juan Amieva & Maciel Bueno persevered through to snatch the four remaining vacancies in the main draw.

• Watch the Rio de Janeiro Elite16 on VBTV.

Chile’s Quintero & Droguett were the lowest seeded team to emerge successful from the qualifier grind. Seeded 11^th in the qualification bracket, they took the 16^th seed in the main draw and ended up in Pool A alongside reigning Olympic champions David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig of Sweden, Norway’s Mathias Berntsen & Hendrik Mol and Austria’s Philipp Waller & Timo Hammarberg.

On Wednesday, Droguett and the absolute Beach Pro Tour rookie Quintero started with a 2-0 (23-21, 21-15) upset of Brazil’s Pedro Solberg & Gabriel Dos Reis Santiago and finished with a 2-1 (17-21, 23-21, 15-12) comeback against Portugal’s Joao Pedrosa & Hugo Campos.

An already tough Pool B got even tougher with the presence of Germany’s Hustler & Just. They will take on Tokyo 2020 Olympic champions Anders Mol & Christian Sorum of Norway, Latvia’s Martins Plavins & Kristians Fokerots and Brazil’s Andre Stein & Adelmo Goncalves.

Seeded ninth in the qualifiers, the Germans produced a 2-0 (21-13, 21-13) sweep of their first-round encounter with Brazil’s Vinicius Freitas & Heitor Barbosa and, then, they overcame the top-seeded home pair, Gustavo Carvalhaes (Guto) & Vitor Felipe in a 2-1 (21-17, 9-21, 15-8) rollercoaster.

Fourth-seeded Bello & Bello managed a 2-0 (21-14, 21-19) first-round victory over Brazil’s Felipe Alves & Henrique Camboim. In a tough second-round encounter with USA’s Chaim Schalk & James Shaw, the English twins came back from a set down to celebrate a 2-1 (18-21, 21-15, 15-10) turnaround.

On Thursday, the Bellos will start their main draw action against Qatari standouts Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan. Their Pool C campaign will continue with matches against Netherlands’ Steven van de Velde & Matthew Immers and Brazil’s Arthur Mariano & Pedro Sousa.

Amieva & Bueno ended up in Pool D and are set to compete against Brazil’s Adrielson Dos Santos & Arthur Da Silva, compatriots Nicolas Capogrosso & Tomas Capogrosso and Ukraine’s Sergiy Popov & Eduard Reznik.

To get there, the second-seeded Argentineans delivered a 2-0 (21-10, 21-12) shutout of Italy’s Davide Benzi & Carlo Bonifazi and followed up with a hard-fought 2-1 (21-19, 18-21, 15-13) victory over USA’s Hagen Smith & Logan Webber.

The men’s main draw in Rio on Thursday will get underway at 09:00 local time (13:00 UTC).

VW Beach Pro Tour Rio de Janeiro Elite16: results and schedule

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