Brunner-Huberli knock Cheng-Hughes out of Olympics beach volleyball
The lone remaining USA beach volleyball pair of Miles Partain and Andy Benesh play Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan of Qatar at 10 p.m. Paris time Wednesday (4 p.m. Eastern, 1 p.m. Pacific) to wrap up the quarterfinals.
At 5 p.m. the TCU pair from Spain, Daniela Alvarez and Tania Moreno, play Canadians Brandie Wilkerson and Melissa Humana-Paredes, and then forner USC great Tina Graudina and her Latvian teammate Anastasija Samoilova play Brazil’s Ana Patricia and Duda.
The other men’s quarterfinal match pits Spain’s Herrera and Gavira against Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sorum.
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Rivo Vesik was sitting beyond the end line during April’s Guadalajara Challenge, in the nerve-wracking position familiar to all international beach volleyball coaches: complete and total helplessness.
Once the match begins — in this case, that match was his Swiss pair of Nina Brunner and Tanja Huberli vs. Canada’s Sophie Bukovec and Heather Bansley — you can do nothing but watch.
For years, his team had established itself as one of the world’s best. Brunner as an elite defender, Huberli a superb blocker. Two-time European Champs.
Yet the wins eluded them. Talented and successful as they were, they hadn’t won a single gold on the Beach Pro Tour.
What, he was asked, were they missing? On paper, they had every ingredient: spectacular defender, physical blocker who can hit angles only select few in the world could, two aggressive serves that could get hot on a moment’s notice.
He laughed and shrugged.
Confidence, he said. That American type of confidence.
Four months later, it would seem they’ve found it.
Since that tournament in Guadalajara, Brunner and Huberli have won their first tournament on the Beach Pro Tour — the Tepic Elite16 in May — took silver a few weeks later in Espinho, Portugal, and are playing arguably the best beach volleyball of anyone in the Olympic Games.
The latter half of that statement, on Tuesday evening in the Paris Olympics, came at the expense of Americans Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes, as Switzerland won, 21-18, 21-19 in an excellent quarterfinal.
It marks the first time since 2004 that the USA will not win a women’s beach volleyball medal.
Like Brunner and Huberli, Cheng and Hughes entered Tuesday’s quarterfinal undefeated, having dropped just a single set. Brunner and Huberli hadn’t even done that, winning all eight sets they’d played, many by margins that would be called unsportsmanlike at the youth level.
The question, then, was this: With everything — defense, offense, serving, everything — going in the proper direction for the Swiss, did they have the confidence and mental makeup to upset the World Champs and make their first Olympic semifinals?
They left no doubt.
Only once did Switzerland waver in their sweep over Cheng and Hughes. Up 11-10 in the second set up the technical timeout, Brunner and Huberli allowed a 4-1 USA run and were now staring down a 12-14 deficit, their biggest of the match. Brunner, who at that point was siding out at 82 percent for the tournament, highest in the field, was struggling with Hughes’ short float serves. Between the out of system passing and occasional ace (Hughes would finish with three), Brunner, for perhaps the first time all tournament, was slightly imperfect.
It didn’t last long.
A timeout. A recovery. A response as smooth and calm as a summer sea.
They retook the lead, 18-17, and leaned on their defense, the stoutest of any team in Paris, to close the match. A Brunner dig at 20-19 was lofted perfectly to Huberli, who poked it down for the win, a crushing blow to the USA, who boasted the teams seeded 2 (Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth) and 3 (Cheng and Hughes) and will come away with a ninth and a fifth, respectively.
“I think we fought back so hard in the first. I think I made a few too many errors early on in the first. But we came back and just one or two aces and the game is over,” Cheng said.
“Similarly in the second. I whiffed two balls out and an ace down the middle again and the game is gone. It’s tough. They had their foot on the gas the whole time and maybe we let up a bit too much. Not intentionally, it happens. I wish we could have got a few more aces too.”
It is important to note that there is a difference between one team playing excellent and winning a match, and another team giving it away. Cheng and Hughes did not give this match away to Brunner and Huberli.
Switzerland took it.
“They’re an amazing team and they showed it,” Hughes said. “They were going after everything. A lot of things were going their way but that’s just how it goes sometimes.”
The Swiss took it with digs (Brunner’s 6 to Hughes’ 5), blocks (Huberli’s 2 to Cheng’s 1), aces (Switzerland’s 7 to USA’s 3) and a steady offensive presence that limited their biggest deficit of either set to just two. Were the Americans perfect? No. Tuesday was not the peak of their abilities, while it was peak Switzerland. In a sport decided by fractions — fingernails, sometimes — that is enough to be the difference in an Olympic quarterfinal.
Now Brunner and Huberli are in uncharted territory: the Olympic semifinals, where they will play the winner of Canada’s Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson vs. Spain’s Daniela Alvarez and Tania Moreno.
They are the final Swiss team remaining, with Cinderellas Zoe Verge-Depre and Esmee Bobner falling short against Australia’s Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho, who are now in position to win a second consecutive Olympic medal following their silver in Tokyo. They will play the winner of Brazil’s Ana Patricia Silva and Duda Lisboa and Latvia’s Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoilova.
Clancy and Artacho beat previously unbeaten Verge-Depree and Bobner 21-19, 16-21, 15-12.
Sweden men resume world-class form, push into Paris Olympics semis
Whatever it was that ailed Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig during pool play of the Paris Olympic Games seems to have been exorcised from their system. Following two pool play losses — matching their total for the entire season — Ahman and Hellvig have rebounded with impressive victories over two previously undefeated teams in Cuba’s Jorge Alayo and Noslen Diaz (21-11, 26-28, 15-11), and Brazil’s Evandro Goncalves and Arthur Mariano (21-17, 21-16).
They now await the winner of USA’s Miles Partain and Andy Benesh vs. Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan.
German men make yet another semifinal after beating Netherlands
Gemany’s Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler are the kings of the semifinal in 2024. In eight tournaments this season, they’ve now made the semifinals in six of them, following their 22-20, 21-15 win over Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot of the Netherlands.
They will play the winner of Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sorum and Spain’s Adrian Gavira and Pablo Herrera.
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