Makhno twins win Ios to make it two in a row

Two sets of siblings triumphed on top of the Ios Futures podium in Greece on Sunday. Ukrainian twins Inna Makhno & Iryna Makhno claimed the women’s gold to make it two in a row in two consecutive weeks on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour. Greece’s Elisavet Triantafillidi & Dimitra Manavi delighted the home crowd with silver, while France’s Saofe Duval & Marilu Pally settled for bronze. Belgian brothers Gilles Vandecaveye & Louis Vandecaveye earned their first ever Beach Pro Tour gold. Spain’s Daniel Moreno & Roberto Sanfelix and Austria’s Robin Seidl & Alexander Huber completed the men’s podium.

Almost three years after picking up their first Beach Pro Tour gold, Makhno & Makhno collected their second at this month’s Krakow Futures. The very next week, they claimed their third in Ios. The third-seeded Ukrainian team lost its pool final to Duval & Pally and had to take the long route to the semifinals before taking on the French duo again and taking their revenge with a 2-0 (21-17, 21-13) win. In a nail-biting final, the Makhno twins celebrated a tight 2-1 (21-17, 19-21, 18-16) victory over home favorites Triantafillidi & Manavi.

The fourth-seeded Greek team capitalized on its home-sand advantage to make it to their first Beach Pro Tour final. In their semifinal, Triantafillidi & Manavi managed a narrow 2-0 (22-20, 21-19) win over fifth-seeded Sakura Ito & Mayu Sawame of Japan to secure their second ever podium on the Tour.

To secure their first ever Tour podium as a pair, sixth-seeded Duval & Pally bounced back from the semifinal interruption of their victory series in Ios with a 2-0 (21-16, 21-17) sweep of the bronze medal game against Sakura & Sawame.

Vandecaveye & Vandecaveye had previously collected three Beach Pro Tour medals, but now they finally triumphed on top of the podium for the first time, cruising through the men’s tournament in Greece on an undefeated streak of five matches. The sixth-seeded Belgian brothers finished the job with a 2-0 (21-17, 21-7) sweep of their semifinal against 11^th-seeded Germans Niklas Held & Hennes Jorge Nissen, and a hard-fought 2-0 (21-16, 23-21) victory over Moreno & Sanfelix in the final.

The seventh-seeded Spaniards settled for silver, their first Beach Pro Tour medal, after they had delivered a 2-1 (21-11, 18-21, 15-12) upset of Rio 2016 Olympians Seidl & Huber in the semifinals.

The experienced Austrians, seeded fifth in Ios, earned their third Tour medal since they reunited for the start of this season. After their Songkhla Futures silver and Battipaglia Futures bronze, they took another bronze last week after defeating Held & Nissen by a convincing 2-0 (21-16, 21-15) in the third-place match.

22 men’s teams and 21 women’s teams representing 22 different countries took part in the Ios Futures. The next Futures event is this week, a women’s tournament in Geneva, Switzerland from June 26 to 29.

Ios Futures: results and standings

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