Marco Grimalt & Esteban Grimalt earned a last-minute ticket to the playoffs of the men’s Olympic beach volleyball tournament. In a dramatic Pool B match on Friday morning at the Eiffel Tower Stadium in Paris, the 23^rd-seeded Chilean cousins delivered a 2-0 (21-15, 23-21) upset of 14^th-seeded Alex Ranghieri & Adrian Carambula, enough to take over the third place in the final pool standings on point ratios and send the Italians home.

Regardless of what happens in the last match of the pool between Norway’s Anders Mol & Christian Sorum and Netherlands’ Steven van de Velde & Matthew Immers on Friday evening, these two teams will finish in the top two places and will progress straight to the eighthfinals, while Grimalt & Grimalt will finish third. They will not be among the two best-ranked third-placed teams and will move forward to the sixteenthfinal “lucky-loser” round.

The Chileans completely outblocked the Italians in the match (5-0 in stuffs) and that was what made the biggest difference towards their success. Marco Grimalt authored all five kill blocks in the match to finish with 17 points. Esteban Grimalt led the way to victory with 18, while Ranghieri produced a match-high 24 points.

“We are very happy for this victory. It is very important for our confidence,” Marco Grimalt told the FIVB. “Our mentality in this game was very high and very aggressive, and that was the most important thing in winning the match.”

“In this match we achieved our feelings and our game,” Esteban Grimalt said. “It’s so good that we continue on point ratios and we still have our chance to advance to the eighthfinals. Now we want to keep this feeling and this game that we played today and give it all in the next round.”

In another match from the morning session in Paris, a direct duel for the third place in Pool E, 20^th-seeded Canadians Samuel Schachter & Daniel Dearing hammered out a 2-0 (21-16, 21-15) shutout of 17^th-seeded Austrians Julian Horl & Alexander Horst to stay alive in the competition and secure at least one more match under the Eiffel Tower in one of the two sixteenthfinals. Schachter & Dearing finish the pool in third place on a 1-2 win-loss record, while the winless Austrians were eliminated from further contention.

Schachter was the best scorer of the match with 15 points. The first place in the pool will be contested on Friday evening (21:00 local time / 19:00 UTC) in a head-to-head clash between Czechia’s Ondrej Perusic & David Schweiner and Brazil’s Evandro Oliveira & Arthur Mariano.

Olympic Games Paris 2024 Beach Volleyball: schedule and results

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