Santa Rosa, Philippines, November 6, 2024 – The 2024 Asian Senior Beach Volleyball Championships got off to a thrilling start with the opening day of main draw action at Nuvali Sand Courts providing dramatic upsets, incredible comebacks and all-round drama, as Aussies showcased their talents to rule the roost.
Top 3 seeds in the men’s event, all of them from Australia, sealed Day 1 victories, with top seeds, current world No.19 and the 2024 Mollymook Futures champions Mark Nicolaidis/Izac Carracher demolishing Chinese Song Jinyang/Zhang Tai 21-16, 21-18 in Pool A.
Second seeds Thomas Hodges/Zachery Schubert, joint world No.19 and winners at the 2023 Jurmala Challenge, faced a daunting task in beating Iranian qualifiers Salemiinjehboroun Bahman/Abolhassan Khakizadeh, who picked up silver at the 2021 edition in Phuket, Thailand, 21-18, 26-24 in Pool B.
Third seeds D’Artagnan Potts/Jack Pearse, silver medallists at the AVC Beach Tour Taoyuan Open in Chinese Taipei, disposed of Filipinos Francisco Larry John/Rancel Varga 21-11, 21-16 in Pool C.
Another Australian tandem, 14th seeds Joshua Howat/Luke Ryan, also registered their first win following their exceptional 21-18, 21-15 triumph over Japan’s Takahashi Takumi/Ikeda Jumpei in Pool D.
Two strong contenders suffered a Day 1 setback, with Thailand’s fourth seeds Pithak Tipjan/Poravid Taovato and Chinese fifth seeds Wu Jiaxin/Ha Likejiang going down to their respective opponents in hard-fought three-set battles.
Contesting Pool D, Pithak/Poravid, bronze medallists at the previous edition in Fuzhou, China and champions at the AVC Beach Tour Taoyuan Open in Chinese Taipei early this year, clinched the closely-contested first set 21-19 in their tough match against Dmitriy Yakovlev/Sergey Bogatu before going down in the next two sets 19-21, 12-15 to the Kazakh qualifiers.
Chinese veterans Wu/Ha had already captured many titles in international tournaments to their name including three consecutive gold medals on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Futures in 2023 which comprised Sohar in Oman, Mount Maunganui in New Zealand and Coolangatta Futures in Australia.
However, it seemed that luck was not on their side with the Wednesday’s game against Mazin Alhashmi/Hood Al Jalaboubi. Losing the first set 19-21, Wu/Ha fought back hard to take the second set 21-17, but could not maintain their poise and lost the tie-breaker 8-15 to eventually go down in three-setter in Pool E.
As Pithak/Poravid succumbed to…
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