For the first time along their journey as a team, Marta Menegatti & Valentina Gottardi entered the top 10 in the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Ranking. After their fourth place at the Tepic Elite16 on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour last month, the Italian pair moved up to number 11 where they stayed for three weeks, and after last week’s gold at the Saquarema Challenge, climbed another position up to number 10.
Beach Pro Tour
Menegatti & Gottardi join top 10 in World Ranking
Saquarema men’s gold medallists Evandro & Arthur gain 22 positions in the chart
Published 06:46, 18 Apr 2023
Marta Menegatti in action at the Saquarema Challenge
Menegatti & Gottardi collected 800 ranking points with their success in Brazil on Sunday and, after dropping their previous eighth best result of 360 points, netted 440 points towards a new total of 5,500, enough to move the former German partnership of Karla Borger & Julia Sude out of position 10 in the chart. No other changes in the women’s top 10 line-up occurred with Monday’s update of the World Ranking.
GOLD FOR ITALY 🇮🇹!
— Beach Volleyball World (@BeachVBWorld) April 17, 2023
Congrats to Valentina Gottardi & Marta Menegatti for winning the 🥇 at the #BeachProTour Challenge event in Saquarema, Brazil.
📺 Full match replays on VBTV.
🔜 Next Up: Elite16 event in Uberlandia 🇧🇷 Apr 26-30
☀ #BeachProTourSaquarema #BeachVolleyball pic.twitter.com/3z3K2QQyUe
Saquarema bronze medallists Andressa Cavalcanti & Vitoria Rodrigues of Brazil also shifted up a spot to number 13 on a new total of 5,000 points. Their compatriots Taina Bigi & Victoria Lopes gained seven positions with their silver and rose from number 31 to number 24 on a total of 4,350 points.
Lithuania’s Monika Paulikiene & Aine Raupelyte, who made an impressive run from the qualifiers all the way to the semifinals at Saquarema, achieved the highest leap of 55 positions, rocketing from number 145 to number 90. Among the other four teams that reached the Saquarema quarterfinals, Spain’s Liliana Fernаndez & Paula Soria made the highest upward jump of 44 spots up to position 85.
As a relatively new partnership, the Saquarema winners on the men’s side, Evandro Oliveira & Arthur Mariano, netted the entire 800 points that came with their first gold on the Tour and, on a new total of 2,888 points, improved from 74th to 52nd in the World Ranking.
The two American pairs, who pushed their way from the Saquarema qualifiers to the top four in the final standings, also achieved solid gains in the World Ranking. Silver medallists Chase Budinger & Miles Evans, for whom it was only the second Beach Pro Tour event together, added 760 points to the 220 they had picked up at the Itapema Challenge and stormed up the chart into number 139. Fourth-placed Miles Partain & Andrew Benesh climbed 17 positions to number 42.
Austrians Julian Horl & Alexander Horst, who netted 320 of the 720 points that came with their Saquarema bronze, ascended by two positions to number 22 on a total of 4,620 and that is their best ranking since they joined forces for the start of the 2022 season.
Among the teams that finished fifth in Saquarema, the recently paired Dutchmen Steven van de Velde & Matthew Immers made the highest leap of 107 spots up the ranking to number 133.
Steven van de Velde & Matthew Immers
The new update of the men’s World Ranking showed noticeable movements in the top 10, caused not by the Saquarema results, but by the dropping of the points from the Itapema Challenge a year ago. So Brazil’s Andre Stein & George Wanderley, who returned to the second place last week, stayed there for only seven days and fell back down to fourth, letting Alexander Brouwer & Robert Meeuwsen of the Netherlands and David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig of Sweden join top-ranked Anders Mol & Christian Sorum of Norway back into the top three. Czechia’s Ondrej Perusic & David Schweiner, previously ranked eighth, dropped out of the top 10 into position 12.
