David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig are the Paris 2024 Olympic champions in men’s beach volleyball. At their rookie Olympic appearance, the two 22-year-old Swedes conquered the Olympic gold following an emphatic win over Germany’s Nils Ehlers & Clemens Wickler in Saturday’s final showdown.

Similar to the winners of the women’s Olympic title, Brazil’s Ana Patricia Ramos & Eduarda Santos Lisboa (Duda), Ahman & Hellvig also celebrated as Youth Olympic champions in their junior years, claiming the title at Buenos Aires 2018. The Swedish pair also won the FIVB U21 World Championship in 2021, two CEV European Championship crowns, three age-group continental titles and multiple gold medals on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour. With their achievement in Paris, Ahman & Hellvig also brought their country’s first-ever Olympic medal in beach volleyball.

First-time Olympian Ehlers and second-time Olympian Wickler settled for the Paris 2024 silver, their country’s third Olympic medal in men’s beach volleyball, after Jorg Ahmann & Axel Hager's bronze at Sydney 2000 and Julius Brink & Jonas Reckermann's gold at London 2012.

Earlier on Saturday, Tokyo 2020 Olympic champions Anders Mol & Christian Sorum of Norway earned the Paris 2024 Olympic bronze, following a straight-set victory over Qatar’s Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan in the third-place match.

The top-seeded Swedish jump-setters were unstoppable in the final and mastered a convincing 2-0 (21-10, 21-13) victory over third-seeded Ehlers & Wickler. The German team did not seem mentally prepared to show their usual high-level game in this battle and the gold medal showdown was a one-sided affair, in which Ahman & Hellvig dominated on all counts from start to finish.

Hellvig raised four kill blocks and fired one ace towards a match-high 14 points. Ahman finished with 11, including two aces and the swing that brought in the match winner.

“It's just unbelievable! We don't really know what we did out there. We played our hearts out and it worked so well. And now we're standing here with a gold medal and it's just unbelievable,” an elated Ahman told the FIVB after the awarding ceremony.

“We were so focused on every point and didn't really look too much at the score. It was always about the next point and when we got the last point, I just couldn't believe it. I was looking over at the scoreboard and I was like, what happened? It's crazy!”

“We focused before this game, and we knew that if we played well, we could win this match. And then we got to a really good start and after that everything just worked for us and I still don't believe how we managed to play that well actually,” Hellvig added.

“They are the best team in the world,” Wickler said about the Swedish opponents. “If you look at the last two years, how many times they won gold medals on the highest stage, and they were top-seeded in this Olympic Games, so I think any medal other than gold would have been disappointing for them. They are very, very strong. But in this final, I think it was maybe a little bit more our very bad performance. I would love to fight more to have a closer match. We played many games against them, also very close in three sets, or if it was two sets, it was most of the time close, so it's very disappointing for sure.

“But this was a very big achievement for us. I think we can be very proud of ourselves. We played six games on a high level, we played our best. We know we could perform better in the final and if we are able to play another final, I'm sure we will learn from our failure and come stronger for the next one.”

“Probably it needs more than one night to fully appreciate this medal, I don't know,” said Ehlers. “It's like ups and downs in our heads at the moment. When we got the medals around our necks, it felt amazing, but then the next moment I remember what we've done in the final and I'm sad again. So I think I will need more time to realize and to appreciate more what we've done in the last two weeks.”

Olympic Games Paris 2024 Beach Volleyball: all results

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