20-year-old Ukrainians Yeva Serdiuk & Daria Romaniuk claimed their second consecutive Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour gold. After topping the Warsaw Futures podium earlier this month, now they made another victorious run to the trophy at the Balikesir Futures in Turkiye. Estonia’s Heleene Hollas & Liisa Remmelg took silver, while Austria’s Franziska Friedl & Lia Berger claimed the bronze to complete the women’s podium. In an all-Italian men’s final, Manuel Alfieri & Tiziano Andreatta beat Enrico Rossi & Marco Caminati, while Even Stray Aas & Jo Gladsoy Sunde won the all-Norwegian bronze medal match.

Second-seeded Serdiuk & Romaniuk won all five of their matches in Balikesir, dropping only a set along the way, in the epic 2-1 (24-26, 21-16, 28-26) upset of top-seeded Hollas & Remmelg in the final, to pick up their second Beach Pro Tour medal. Before that, in the semifinals, the Ukrainian duo delivered a 2-0 (21-19, 21-13) win over ninth-seeded Valerie Dvornikova & Anna Pospisilova of Czechia.

In the other semifinal, 27-year-old Hollas & Remmelg rounded off a four-match winning streak with a 2-1 (20-22, 21-19, 15-10) comeback against fifth-seeded Friedl & Berger to secure their fifth Beach Pro Tour medal. However, the Estonian pair’s “silver curse” continues as they finished runners-up at all their previous podiums as well.

26-year-old Friedl and 17-year-old Berger, a 2024 U18 European champion, bounced back with a hard-fought 2-1 (18-21, 21-14, 16-14) comeback against Dvornikova & Pospisilova in the third-place match to collect their first-ever Tour medal as a duo. Friedl had two previous podiums with different partners.

Manuel Alfieri & Tiziano Andreatta, seeded fifth in the men’s main draw, achieved their first Beach Pro Tour medal as a team, and it was gold. They cruised through the tournament on a five-match winning streak, crowned by a 2-0 (21-19, 21-17) sweep of the final against sixth-seeded compatriots Enrico Rossi & Marco Caminati. Andreatta had one previous Tour medal, also gold, at last year’s Tahiti Futures. In their semifinal, Alfieri & Andreatta mastered a 2-0 (21-18, 21-17) victory over eighth-seeded Markus Mol & Adrian Mol of Norway.

Tokyo 2020 Olympian Rossi and his partner Caminati, reunited for their first international tournament together since 2018, secured a podium finish with a 2-1 (17-21, 21-15, 15-11) comeback in their semifinal against seventh-seeded Norwegians Aas & Sunde to crown a four-match winning run. Both Rossi and Caminati had one Beach Pro Tour gold each with different partners.

In the all-Norwegian third-place game, 19-year-old Aas and 21-year-old Sunde mastered a 2-0 (21-17, 21-15) straight-setter over 19-year-old Adrian Mol and 22-year-old Markus Mol to pick up their first Tour medal as a team. On last year’s Beach Pro Tour, in a partnership with Markus Mol, Sunde collected three golds and one bronze, and triumphed as a U22 European champion.

23 women’s teams and 26 men’s teams representing 26 different countries took part in the Balikesir Futures. The next Futures tournaments are scheduled to take place from December 5 to 8 in Marica, Brazil and Pompano Beach, USA.

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