Krattiger and Breer complete Cancun qualifier hat-trick

Advancing from the qualifier of an FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour event is no easy task and to do it for three weeks in a row is even more complicated. That’s what Switzerland’s Marco Krattiger and Florian Breer accomplished on Wednesday, in the third 4-star event of the Cancun Hub.

The Swiss became the only team competing in Mexico to advance from all three qualifiers and are, for a third-straight week, guaranteed a place in the main draw at the Playa Delfines. Unlike the first two events, in which they had to win a pair of matches to advance, Krattiger and Beeler needed only a 2-1 (15-21, 21-19, 15-13) victory against Russians Anton Kislytsyn and Daniil Kuvichka to move forward in Mexico this time.

“Each qualification was difficult in its own way, but today the wind was different and it took us a little while to adjust,” the 26-year-old Krattiger said. “That’s why we only got to play better in the final part of the match. Mentally, it’s really difficult to play in three straight qualifiers because every time you advance, you need to change your mindset every three days as things starts from zero again. We played a lot of matches in the first tournaments and weren’t sure if we would play this one, and I’m glad we decided to do it.”

The two players, who won last year’s King of the Court event in Utrecht, did well in the first tournament of the Cancun Hub, finishing ninth. They were 17th in the second and are looking forward to an even stronger performance in their last event on Mexican sand.

“We had our chances to finish in the top ten in the second tournament too,” the blocker reflected. “We nearly had the match against the Netherlands in our pockets, but let it slip through our hands. I think the key will be to keep pushing until the end.  If we give our 100 per cent the entire time, I’m confident we can have another good result.”

The qualifier also highlighted an all-Italian matchup for one of the spots and Andrea Abbiati and Tiziano Andreatta came out on top with a 2-1 (17-21, 23-21, 15-11) win against Samuele Cottafava and Jakob Windisch.

Austrians Christoph Dressler and Alexander Huber, who made the trip to Cancun only for the third event, had a great start in Mexico as they qualified with a 2-0 (21-14, 21-18) victory against Canada's Aaron Nusbaum and Michael Plantinga.

Also advancing to the main draw were Brazil's Pedro Solberg/Arthur Lanci and Gustavo 'Guto' Carvalhaes/Arthur Lanci, the Netherlands' Stefan Boermans/Yorick de Groot, USA's Theo Brunner/Chaim Schalk and New Zealand's Ben O'Dea/Sam O'Dea.

The main draw starts on Thursday in Cancun and all matches will be streamed live on the Beach Volleyball World Youtube channel. Subscribe, log in and set reminders to receive notifications when streams begin.

Go to:
Cancun Hub - 3rd event
Cancun Hub - 3rd event - Match schedule
Provisional Olympic ranking - Men
Provisional Olympic ranking - Women

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