Half a decade ago, a young Polish team changed the entire landscape of the beach volleyball world. Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak were practically kids at the 2016 Rio Grand Slam. Just 24 years apiece, still competing in qualifiers.
Rio would change that.
In March of 2016, Losiak and Kantor made their presence felt, shoot-setting, jump-setting, faking here, juking there, driving blockers mad with a blurry-fast offence the world hadn’t yet seen. They tackled the world’s best that weekend, knocking off Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins, Oleg Stoyanovskiy, Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena, Grzegorz Fijalek and Mariusz Prudel, Pedro Solberg and Evandro.
They ran plays where all Pedro, one of the most voracious competitors on the World Tour, could do was smile and clap.
Welcome to the world, Kantor-Losiak.
Five years later, the offence those Polish wunderkinds ran that weekend in Rio is now in vogue. Most every team runs some version or wrinkle of it. It’s the finest of compliments, an indicator of just how good you are, when you revolutionise how the game is played, when every nation in the world begins emulating – or trying to – what you’re doing.
That’s the impact Kantor and Losiak have made on beach volleyball.
On Sunday afternoon in Sochi, they looked very much the team that changed the world.
Kantor and Losiak beat Qataris Ahmed Tijan and Cherif Younousse, 17-21, 23-21, 15-10 to win in Sochi, claiming their first medal of any color since 2018.
Such a drought for one of the most formidable teams on the planet would have seemed inconceivable then. They had medaled five times in 2018 alone. To imagine them going three years without one would have been laughable.
Yet the world began not only figuring out how to defend against the Polish offense, but to run it themselves. Adjustments were made. Injuries piled up. The medal drought began.
And then, with the Olympics on the line, Kantor and Losiak put on their best performance since 2018. They ran through Alex Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen, toppled the world’s No. 1 team in Anders Mol and Christian Sorum, quelled the King of the Court champs, Marco Krattiger and Florian Breer. They stopped a hot Latvian team in its tracks and stayed disciplined against Adrian Carambula and his bag of tricks.
The first and only set they would drop the entire tournament came to arguably the world’s hottest team, Cherif and Ahmed.
No matter.
Poland came back to win the second, and needed no such comeback to win the third, barreling onwards for a convincing 15-10 win to top a convincing, undefeated tournament, all but claiming an Olympic spot in the process.
“I have no words for this feeling,” Losiak said. “I just know I am so proud of this team and my partner. That’s all.”
Steven van de VeldeGood luck digging Steve van de Velde
As Bartosz Losiak could find no words to describe the gold medal feeling he and Piotr Kantor hadn’t felt in three years, so, too, is there a general loss of words in the beach volleyball community to describe the arm of Steven van de Velde.
Van de Velde and his partner, Christiaan Varenhorst, have quickly established themselves as the biggest bruisers on the beach. They swing, and they swing hard, and they swing high, and they swing fast, and they swing heavy.
For a long time, the biggest hitter on the beach was likely Brazil’s Alison Cerutti. If you didn’t block him, you weren’t scoring on him. Simple as that. Van de Velde has that crown now, and it’s a wonder who might be the distant second.
Varenhorst and van de Velde have used those big arms and equally mighty serves to claim four consecutive top-10 finishes, including a bronze medal in Sochi, defeating Adrian Carambula and Enrico Rossi in the final match. They surpassed countrymen Alex Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen as the No. 1 team in the Netherlands.
Sochi marked their first medal since Itapema of 2019, and from the looks of things, it will be far from their last.
Adrian Carambula (Italy)Adrian Carambula and Enrico Rossi continue torrid run
The aforementioned bronze medal match, between Steven van de Velde and Christiaan Varenhorst and Adrian Carambula and Enrico Rossi, was an absolutely fascinating one to watch. It was a good match, yes, finishing 21-16, 26-28, 15-9 in the Netherlands’ favour. But it was the complete and total contrast in playing styles that made it so wonderful to watch.
There is no one way to win in beach volleyball. There is the Dutch way: Hit hard, and hit often. And there is the Carambula-Rossi way: Trickery and deceit, craft and touch, deftness over brute strength, strategy over power.
Sure, van de Velde and Varenhorst will impress with their enormous bounces and downright frightening swings, but Carambula and Rossi have now made four consecutive quarterfinals and three straight medal matches. In doing so, they’ve sprinted up the Olympic ranks, and are in a safe position, more than likely to qualify for Carambula’s second Games and Rossi’s first.
Anders Mol (Norway)The Beach Volley Vikings are human after all
Every once in a blue moon or so, Christian Sorum will make sure to post a funny error or gaffe from his otherworldly talented partner, Anders Mol.
“Anders is human!” he’ll say in his caption, or some variation of that.
Sometimes the beach volleyball world does need evidence that Mol and Sorum are, indeed, human. The past three years has been one Norwegian medal ceremony after the next as they put together a winning run of which there has been no precedent in World Tour history, winning at rates not accomplished by even Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers or Emanuel and Ricardo.
Last weekend in Sochi was the first tournament in quite some time they’ve appeared mortal.
Beach volleyball’s Achilles showed that it has a heel.
Mol and Sorum finished 17th in Sochi, losing in pool to eventual gold medalists Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak, then losing in the first round of elimination to Latvians Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins. They lost only to two teams who desperately needed to win, lest their Olympic hopes would be doused. Mol and Sorum had no such motivation – they are mathematically guaranteed an Olympic spot.
Not that Mol and Sorum were any less inclined to win. They had won eight of their previous nine tournaments entering Sochi. They love winning, and no team on Earth is better at it.
But they’re human.
That’s all. The end of the story. Anders Mol and Christian Sorum are human.
Even the Beach Volley Vikings are mortal.