Just a couple of hours after well-seasoned Spaniards Pablo Herrera & Adrian Gavira qualified for the men’s quarterfinals at the Paris 2024 beach volleyball tournament, their young female compatriots Daniela Alvarez & Tania Moreno, who are trained by the same coach, Francisco Marco, followed suit and advanced the last eight in the women’s tournament with a shocking victory over medal favourites Katja Stam & Raisa Schoon of the Netherlands. In another men’s eighthfinal that followed, reigning Olympic champions Anders Mol & Christian Sorum of Norway hammered out a speedy shutout of USA’s Miles Evans & Chase Budinger and also booked their spot in the quarterfinals.

18^th-seeded Alvarez & Moreno mounted a stunning comeback from a set down against the eighth-seeded Dutch standouts to celebrate a 2-1 (18-21, 21-19, 15-13) victory.

After a nip-and-tack battle through of the first set, Stam & Schoon scored three in a row to reach set point at 20-17 and, shortly after, took the lead in the match, handing the opponents their first set loss in the tournament. They were well on their way to winning in straight sets at 18-14 in the second set, when Alvarez & Moreno started their phenomenal turnaround. The 22-year-old Spaniards produced six consecutive points for a 20-18 set point before leveling the match score. The tight duel continued in the tie-breaker, but after 9-9, Alvarez & Moreno took control of the scoreboard for good. They reached a triple match point at 14-11. The Dutch denied it twice, but finally Alvarez closed the match with a spike on two for the 15-13 winner. Moreno shined with a match-high 26 points, including two aces, while Stam finished with 21.

“All the emotions just showed up at the end. I just grabbed Dani with all my strength and then jumped into my family,” and elated Moreno said after the match. “I couldn’t realize what we were doing and now I am just grateful for the opportunity, for all the people out there, supporting and pushing the team during the entire Olympic race, and grateful to feel the support of my family. We are just following our Olympic dream right now and I’m happy to share that with Dani too. I am so happy for Pablo and his team too, because he is a role model, not only in beach volleyball, but in sports.”

“Tania and I have been playing together for a long time, since we were 15 years old. We share so many moments on and off the court and getting to do this together, the trust that we have in each other, the confidence that we have in our team – all that combines in success. I am so grateful to have the team I have and share this with Tania,” Alvarez told the FIVB. “Katja and Raisa are both amazing players. Raisa is our year, so we’ve been playing together in under-age since we were super young. They took us out of the medals at the Elite16 in Espinho, they took us out of the medals back in Munich at the 2022 European Championship and they took us out of the World Champs in October, so we knew it was going to be such a hard game. They played amazing, but we managed to get the win, so we are super excited.

“Tania and I kind of have a history with comebacks. We just keep fighting and give our all. You don’t get to play at this amazing venue every day, so we wanted to spend more time playing here. We got so much energy from the crowd. I got so much energy from Tania. Seeing our parents and our families in the crowd was just amazing! I am speechless! This is really cool!”

Next, Alvarez & Moreno will face the winner of the eighthfinal match between Canada’s Melissa Humana-Paredes & Brandie Wilkerson and USA’s Kristen Nuss & Taryn Kloth, starting at 18:00 local time (16:00 UTC) on Monday.

“That’s going to be a tough game too,” Moreno commented. “Now we just have to reset, recover, prepare for the next game and put in everything that we have. It’s a big opportunity that doesn’t always happen, so we’ll just use it to show our best game and fight for the medals – for our team and for Spain.”

In the game that followed, second-seeded Mol & Sorum prevailed over 19^th-seeded Evans & Budinger to register an emphatic 2-0 (21-16, 21-14) win, outplaying the opponents on all counts. Mol was on fire and led the way with six kill blocks, three aces and 11 kills in attack, including the match winner. The other three players on the court finished with 12 points each.

Spain’s Herrera & Gavira will be Mol & Sorum’s opponents in one of the quarterfinals on Wednesday.

Olympic Games Paris 2024 Beach Volleyball: schedule and results

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