Almost two years ago exactly, Kerri Walsh Jennings had just arrived in Ostrava from Jinjiang, China. She and Brooke Sweat had emerged from the qualifier to win, marking their first gold medal as a team, and Sweat's first on the World Tour.
Gold medals are, of course, nothing new to Walsh Jennings. She’s won more of those than anyone in history. There are no easy roads to gold, yet this one seemed particularly difficult, a route that required victories over Anouk Verge-Depre and Joana Heidrich, Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy, Laura Ludwig and Margareta Kozuch, Kelly Claes and Sarah Sponcil, Agatha and Duda, and the Australians again in the gold medal match.
This, Walsh Jennings said then, was the deepest she’d ever seen the World Tour. Walsh Jennings is more qualified than anyone on the planet to make that statement, a veteran who won her first FIVB medal in 2001, when many of her current competitors were learning to tie their own shoes.
That tournament in Jinjiang was only two years ago.
The World Tour has only gotten deeper since.
Any evidence you’d need was on full display in Sochi, Russia, this past weekend.
The average age of the four semifinalists – Sponcil and Claes, Tina Graudina and Anastasija Kravcenoka, Tanja Huberli and Nina Betschart, Nadezda Makroguzova and Svetlana Kholomina – was 24 years old. Collectively, they had one four-star win to their name. Their average seed was 10, and even that’s a bit skewed, as Kholomina and Makroguzova were given the No. 1 seed for being the host country.
The world is changing.
It's getting deeper. The powers are expanding. No longer is it such a given that either April Ross and Alix Klineman, or Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan will be competing for gold, much less competing against one another for it.
New teams are rising to the top.
Sponcil and Claes, competing in their 100th tournament as a team, won their first gold medal. In doing so, they passed Walsh Jennings and Sweat in the Olympic race.
There’s a new depth to this World Tour.
A new generation coming through.
Nina Betschart/Tanja Hüberli, Switzerland
Swiss Strength
When thinking of Swiss women’s beach volleyball, the first thought likely to come to mind is, understandably, Anouk Verge-Depre and Joana Heidrich. They’re the No. 1-ranked team in the country, the defending European Champs. They’re the ones with the Red Bull sponsorship, the ones who won in Moscow in 2019. They’re qualified for the Olympic Games.
And yet, here were Nina Betschart and Tanja Huberli.
Seven straight tournaments, they have now finished in the top-10. Each time, they’ve gotten closer to pushing through the barrier, losing narrowly to Agatha and Duda in Doha, even narrower to Cinja Tillman and Chantal Laboureur in Cancun, to Claes and Sponcil in the second Cancun Bubble, in three to April Ross and Alix Klineman in the third Cancun Bubble.
They’ve been close, closer, and closest.
Then, in Sochi, breakthrough.
Betschart and Huberli, who are also qualified for the Tokyo Olympic Games, won a difficult pool, beating Kerri Walsh Jennings and Brooke Sweat and Victoria Lopes and Taina Silva. They swept Verge-Depre and Heidrich in the first round, Sanne Keizer and Maddelin Meppelink in the quarterfinals, Graudina and Gravcenoka in the semifinals.
They found themselves in their first four-star final.
A different Swiss team than many might expect.
Just following the trend of the rest of the world: the next teams are rising.
April Ross (USA)/Alexandra Klineman (USA)Little Civil Wars everywhere
Given that there is a country quota limiting each country to just four teams per tournament, it would seem to be an unfortunate coincidence, a strange happening, when teams from the same country must play one another. And, normally, it is just that: a strange happening, an unfortunate coincidence.
In Sochi, it was a bizarre norm.
In the second round of the elimination bracket, Brazil played Brazil: Carol and Barbara were felled by Agatha and Duda. Americans played Americans, as Sarah Sponcil and Kelly Claes quelled the Olympic hopes of Emily Stockman and Kelley Kolinske, knocking them both out of the tournament and the race to Tokyo.
Below them, Heather Bansley and Brandie Wilkerson retired Nicole and Megan McNamara, who were competing in their first World Tour event since Vienna of 2019.
Still, there were more. Swiss Nina Betschart and Tanja Huberli met Anouk Verge-Depre and Joana Heidrich, winning 21-19, 21-14.
And still, there were more: now in the quarterfinals, Claes and Sponcil had yet another Civil War to play, beating April Ross and Alix Klineman, 21-18, 19-21, 15-7.
The eventual result of all this infighting was quite fun, actually: four different nationalities were represented in the semifinals, and nine different countries comprised the top 10. It made for a weird beginning to the bracket, but it also created a truly global finish to the tournament, giving fans all over the world something to watch.
Brandie Wilkerson (CAN)Brandie Wilkerson, Heather Bansley settling into groove
The 2020 and 2021 years have been volatile for every human being around the globe. For Heather Bansley and Brandie Wilkerson, these years have been especially peculiar. The two have been living mostly in Brazil, where they have been able to train outdoors and properly prepare for tournaments. Still, they haven’t been able to return home to Toronto, even after the Cancun Bubble. It’s difficult to attain peak performance, when you’re perpetually outside of your comfort zone, unable to get a solid reset, both mentally and physically.
In Sochi, Bansley and Wilkerson found a bit of the rhythm that had them ranked as the No. 1 team in the world in 2018.
Since winning a bronze medal in Tokyo of 2019, Bansley and Wilkerson finished 17th in both Vienna and Rome, 13th in the Olympic Qualification Tournament, ninth in Chetumal, ninth in the first Cancun Bubble, fifth in the next, and then back-to-back 17ths in the final two Cancun Bubble events. They weren’t crazy far off – just a touch, only narrowly losing to fantastic teams.
In Sochi, they began to resemble the magnificent 2018 team that was awarded both the Best Blocker and Best Defender on the FIVB.
For the second time in their previous 13 tournaments, they won their pool, and handily so, thumping Germans Karla Borger and Julia Sude and Brazilians Talita Antunes and Taiana Lima in straight sets. They won an excellent match over Nicole and Megan McNamara to push to the quarterfinals.
Yes, they fell to Latvians Tina Graudina and Anastasija Kravcenoka, 21-16, 18-21, 11-15 in the quarterfinals. Yes, they failed to win a medal.
But the point is how they played: like a team that was beginning to settle into a groove in a season that can be difficult to find when you're constantly on the road.
Quick links:
FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour
Olympic Games Tokyo 2020
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