Stefan Boermans & Yorick de Groot of the Netherlands knocked out the reigning world champions in the second men’s eighthfinal at the Olympic beach volleyball on Sunday afternoon. Then, the world’s number one team David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig of Sweden also advanced to the quarterfinals after putting a stop to Noslen Diaz & Jorge Alayo’s fantastic run at Paris 2024.
Seventh-seeded Boermans & De Groot mastered a 2-0 (21-18, 21-16) sweep of their match against fifth-seeded Ondrej Perusic & David Schweiner. The Dutch stayed well in control through most of the game and earned a well-deserved victory. They outplayed the Czechs in spiking and in serving, but mostly capitalized on the abundant unforced errors the world champions made. Boermans led his team with 20 points, including three of the pair’s five aces in the match. De Groot scored 12 points, including the match winner. Schweiner showed his blocking skills with four stuffs and finished with 22 points as the top scorer of the match.
“We started pretty decent. We played a very good game at the beginning, but they also did,” Boermans commented after the game. “They took some points here and there and we had to catch up with them, but in the end we kept our heads cool, we played good sideout, and Yorick was able to dig some balls, so we could make the difference. I think the service pressure was also good, so actually - a lot of good things! We are happy with the win.”
“We knew that if we played well we could beat them. In the last four matches they beat us and we’ve been struggling against them, but I think it was quite equal going into this match, so I am happy that we came out as the winners,” De Groot added.
