Beach Volleyball Olympic Games Paris 2024

Sunday wraps up with quarterfinal spots for Evandro & Arthur and Hughes & Cheng

Published 09:22, 04 Aug 2024

Evandro/Arthur (BRA) vs. van de Velde/Immers (NED) - Round of 16 #18635647

Spectacular save by Arthur

Brazil’s Evandro Oliveira & Arthur Mariano celebrated victory in the last men’s eighthfinal match on Sunday’s Olympic beach volleyball tournament and advanced to the quarterfinals, where they are going to meet the world’s number one team David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig of Sweden. Then, the fourth quarterfinalist in the women’s competition emerged. USA’s Sara Hughes & Kelly Cheng won the last match of the day to face Switzerland’s Tanja Huberli & Nina Brunner in a duel for a spot in the semifinals.

Evandro/Arthur (BRA) vs. van de Velde/Immers (NED) - Round of 16 #18635656

Evandro & Arthur celebrate their eighthfinal victory at the Eiffel Tower Stadium

Eighth-seeded Evandro & Arthur dominated their game against 11^th-seeded Steven van de Velde & Matthew Immers of the Netherlands and mastered a 2-0 (21-16, 21-16) shutout. Throughout the match, the Brazilians were way more aggressive in attack and took more risk from the serving line, which paid off with as many as nine aces against only one for the opponents. Arthur authored five of these aces to finish with a match-high 24 points. Evandro registered four direct points from the serving line and collected a total of 12 points.

“It was a good match for us. It was an excellent match in terms of service, which gave us a very good advantage,” commented Evandro. “The way this guy (Arthur) helped me today was amazing. He didn’t let any ball touch the floor and that’s what we needed to get the win today.”

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Evandro & Arthur’s quarterfinal against Ahman & Hellvig will be played on Tuesday.

“Yes, we face a tough opponent, but they also face a tough opponent,” Evandro told the FIVB. “Our team has been evolving a lot in the tournament and building our confidence. Now we go back to the Village and start studying their team in order to have a great match against them in the quarterfinals.”

Hughes/Cheng (USA) vs. Gottardi/Menegatti (ITA) - Round of 16 #18635826

Sara Hughes in defence

The last match of the day offered an exciting three-set battle, in which third-seeded world champions Hughes & Cheng squeezed out a hard-fought 2-1 (21-18, 17-21, 15-12) victory over 12^th-seeded Valentina Gottardi & Marta Menegatti of Italy.

In the money time of a nip-and-tuck first set, the Americans managed to break away to take the lead in the match. The Italians took control of the second set to level the score. Hughes & Cheng stormed the tie-breaker on a 5-1 run, but Gottardi & Menegatti kept pushing to get back to within one at 12-11. But that was as close as they could get. Finally Cheng put away the 15-12 winner as her team secured advancement to the last eight. Menegatti was the best scorer of the match with 23 points, followed by Cheng with 21 (including three aces and two kill blocks).