Third seeds and 2022 Birmingham Commonwealth Games champions Christopher McHugh/Paul Burnett kicked off their title defense campaign in the Bandar Abbas-hosted Asian Senior Men’s Beach Volleyball Championship in Iran on Tuesday with stunning loss in Pool C, as current FIVB world No.4 and second seeds Cherif Younousse/Ahmed Tijan sealed first win in their opening Pool B clash.
Australians McHugh and Burnett, who powered past Iranians Bahman Salemi/Abolhassan Khakizadeh 21-16, 21-13 in the final showdown to capture the men’s title at the last year’s double-gender Asian Senior Beach Volleyball Championships in Phuket, Thailand, went down 20-22, 19-21 to Japanese Kensuke Shoji/Ikeda Jumpei in a hard-fought encounter on Tuesday.
Veteran McHugh, 33, who captured five Asian Championship titles including his first three in 2012, 2014 and 2016 with previous partner Isaac Kapa, and Burnett will next play a must-win match against Mohammad Ashfiya/Ade Candra Rachmawan, the silver medallists at the 2018 Asian Games in Palembang. The Indonesian duo got the continent’s topflight tournament off to a good start after demolishing Shoji/Ikeda 2-0 the previous day.
Another Australian pairing, fourth seeds Izac Carracher/Mark Nicolaidis, fresh from winning their first match against Hong Kong, China’s Wong Ka Yun/Tse Kin Wang in Pool D, also faced the similar fate on Tuesday. The gold medallists at the Coolangatta Future Beach Pro Tour in April lost 21-17, 21-23, 10-15 in a closely-contested clash against Kazakhstan’s Dmitriy Yakovlev/Sergey Bogatu.
However, fifth seeds Zachery Schubert and Thomas Hodges, who had captured three titles to their name this year including the Orlen Beach Volleyball Tour in Kolobrzeg, Poland in August and the AVC Beach Tour Samila Open in Thailand in September, saved the day for Australia.
Schubert and Hodges stunned Indonesians Danangsyah Pribadi/Gilang Ramadhan, bronze medallists at he 2018 Asian Games, for two in a row in Pool E to next play Japanese Yoshiumi Hasegawa/Masato Kurasaka in their last match in the pool round-robin preliminaries.
Meanwhile, Qataris Cherif/Ahmed, bronze medallists at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, winners at the 2018 and 2019 Asian Championships and gold medallists at the 2018 Asian Games, made a perfect start in Bandar Abbas on Tuesday as the superb duo defeated Chinese Wang Yanwei/Zhou Chaowei 21-16, 23-21 in Pool B.
With only top two teams from each pool advancing to the knockout round of last…
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