Recapping the first day of the knockout rounds of the 2016 Rio Olympics beach volleyball tournament.
Following a week of preliminaries at the Olympics, the Round of 16 got underway with four matches in both the men’s and women’s beach volleyball tournaments.
American duo Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross looked to remain perfect for the tournament with a win against Laura Giombini and Marta Menegatti of Italy in the final match of the evening. Walsh Jennings and Ross had little trouble in the first set, cruising to a 21-10 victory, before putting the match away 21-16 to comfortably advance to the final eight.
The hosts got off to a great start in the knockout rounds, sending two women’s teams through to the last eight in the morning session. Top-seeded Talita Antunes and Larissa Franca swept Karla Borger and Britta Buthe of Germany 21-17, 21-19, while Barbara Seixas and Agatha Bednarczuk bounced back from a group stage loss with an easy win over China.
In the men’s tournament, Cuba’s Nivaldo Diaz and Sergio Gonzalez kept their underdog run going with a clean sweep over Alexander Horst and Clemens Doppler. The 21st seeded Cubans already had wins over the No. 4 and No. 8 teams, and can now add the solid Austrian squad to their resume.
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Qatar’s Cherif Younousse Samba and Jefferson Santos Pereira could not complete a similar upset bid and were swept by Russia’s Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Konstantin Semenov 21-13, 21-13. Reinder Nummerdor and Christian Varenhorst of the Netherlands recovered from an earlier loss to the Russian duo, easily sweeping the Netherlands.
Two Italian teams met to close out the action in the men’s Round of 16 for the day. Daniele Lupo and Paolo Nicolai upset their third-seeded teammates Alex Ranghieri and Adrian Carambula 21-12, 21-13 to move on to the quarterfinals.