Nicolai & Lupo persevere for hard-fought comeback

The second competition day of the men’s Olympic beach volleyball tournament at Tokyo 2020 offered action in three different pools. Two of Sunday’s six matches at Shiokaze Park were pushed to three sets.

Probably the most anticipated match on the programme was the Pool F fixture between the silver medallists of the last edition of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship, Germany’s Julius Thole and Clemens Wickler, and the silver medallists of the last Olympic Games, Italy’s Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo. The result was a close call throughout and each of the three sets was resolved by the narrowest of margins. The Germans won the first set, but, making fewer mistakes, the Italians methodically worked their way back to turn the score around. A monster block by Nicolai delivered the match point in the tie-breaker. Seconds later, Lupo found an empty spot on the German side of the court to close it off at 2-1 (19-21, 21-19 15-13).

“It was a tough match. It was very close and I don’t know what in detail made the difference. Maybe we did something better or we were just luckier,” Paolo Nicolai told Volleyball World after the game. “For sure, both teams deserved the win. Today we won and we are happy for that.”

Also in that pool, earlier in the day, Poland’s Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak dominated the representatives of the host country, Yusuke ‘Gottsu’ Ishijima and Katsuhiro Shiratori, on the way to a 2-0 (21-15, 21-14) win.

In one of the day’s most interesting matches, three sets were needed to determine the winner between the Brazilian pairing of former world champion Evandro Goncalves and defending Olympic champ Bruno Schmidt and Marco Grimalt and Esteban Grimalt of Chile. Brazil won the first set. However, the Chilean cousins fought their way back to level the match and push it to a tie-breaker. Evandro and Bruno Schmidt, however, did not allow their opponents to achieve a complete turnaround and claimed the decider to win the match by 2-1 (21-15, 16-21, 15-12).

Later on, in the other fixture in Pool E, Poland’s Michal Bryl and Grzegorz Fijalek produced a 2-0 (21-17, 21-11) shutout of Morocco’s Mohamed Abicha and Zouheir Elgraoui.

Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan continued the solid performances they have had on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour since the start of the 2021 season. They started their Tokyo 2020 campaign in Pool C with a 2-0 (21-17, 21-16) victory over Switzerland’s Adrian Heidrich and Mirco Gerson.

USA’s Jake Gibb and Tri Bourne shut out Italy’s Adrian Carambula and Enrico Rossi in the last match of the day. The Americans mastered a tight 2-0 (21-18, 21-19) win to join the Qataris as current leaders in the pool.

Quick links:
Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 - Schedule and results
Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 - Beach volleyball
FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour
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