England’s Joaquin Bello & Javier Bello, who started their campaign at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Elite16 in Rio de Janeiro from Wednesday’s qualifiers, recovered from their loss at the start of the men’s main draw on Thursday and won both of their matches on Friday to top the final standings in their pool and advance straight to Saturday’s quarterfinals. David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig of Sweden, Anders Mol & Christian Sorum of Norway and Nicolas Capogrosso & Tomas Capogrosso of Argentina, all undefeated in their pools, were the other three teams that qualified straight to the last eight, skipping the eighthfinal round on Saturday morning, which will feature the second and the third-placed teams in the four pools.

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Seeded 14^th in the 16-team main draw bracket, Joaquin Bello & Javier Bello pulled off an impressive 2-0 (21-16, 21-17) upset of sixth-seeded Paris 2024 Olympians Steven van de Velde & Matthew Immers of the Netherlands, who contributed to their opponents’ success with abundant unforced errors, while Joaquin Bello raised five kill blocks in the process. In their last Pool C match, the inspired Englishmen hammered out a 2-0 (21-11, 21-16) shutout of Brazil’s Pedro Sousa & Arthur Mariano, which was enough to place them on top of the final pool standings. Joaquin was the best scorer of that match with 21 points to his name.

Van de Velde & Matthew Immers bounced back with a 2-0 (21-16, 21-14) sweep of their last pool match, handing third-seeded Qatari standouts Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan their first defeat of the tournament. Immers and Cherif shared the top scorer honours with 16 points each, while Van de Velde shined from the serving line with five aces. This way, three teams finished Pool C with 2-1 win-loss records and their point ratios determined the final standings, with the Dutch in second place and the Qataris in third.

In Pool A, Paris 2024 Olympic champions and FIVB World Ranking leaders, top-seeded David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig cruised on without dropping a set. On Friday, the Swedes added two straight-set victories to their tally and topped the table on a perfect 3-0 win-loss record – 2-0 (21-16, 21-13) over Austria’s Philipp Waller & Timo Hammarberg and a narrow 2-0 (21-19, 27-25) over Norway’s Mathias Berntsen & Hendrik Mol. Meanwhile, both of these teams produced straight-set wins over Chilean qualifiers Fernando Quintero & Vicente Droguett to advance to the eighthfinals as the second and the third-placed teams in the pool, respectively.

Second-seeded Anders Mol & Christian Sorum, Tokyo 2020 Olympic champions and Paris 2024 Olympic bronze medallists, secured the top of the Pool B standings, adding a third win to their record on Friday. With a 19-point match high from Sorum and four kill blocks and three aces from Mol, they did not leave many chances to Latvia’s Martins Plavins & Kristians Fokerots on the way to a 2-0 (21-17, 21-12) shutout. The Latvians progressed to the first knockout round as the third-placed team in the pool, joined by pool runners-up Adelmo Folha & Andre Stein of Brazil, whose Friday programme consisted of a 2-0 (21-14, 21-18) win over German qualifiers Philipp Huster & Maximilian Just.

Friday’s big question in Pool D was who was going to win the direct duel for the first place. Having won two matches each on Thursday, fourth-seeded Adrielson Dos Santos & Arthur Da Silva of Brazil and fifth-seeded Nicolas Capogrosso & Tomas Capogrosso of Argentina faced each other across the net in the decider. A three-set battle unfolded as the Capogrossos took a narrow tie-breaker win to celebrate a 2-1 (21-17, 16-21, 15-13) match victory. Nicolas Capogrosso led the way with 27 points, including four stuffs. His Brazilian counterpart Arthur Da Silva raised as many as eight kill blocks to finish with 26 points. In a direct fight for survival in the tournament, Ukraine’s Sergiy Popov & Eduard Reznik secured the third place in the pool by downing Argentinean qualifiers Juan Amieva & Maciel Bueno in a hard-fought 2-0 (21-19, 25-23) straight-setter.

Men’s main draw action will continue at 09:00 local time (12:00 UTC) on Saturday. The day’s programme includes the four eighthfinal matches in the morning and the four quarterfinals in the afternoon.

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

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