Australians assured of back-to-back Men’s Asian Championship titles
For the second year running, Australia will take out the Asian Men’s Beach Volleyball Championship however the final is not the one most were expecting.
Last year Zach Schubert and Tom Hodges beat Chris McHugh and Paul Burnett in the final and then defending champions were on a collision course with Olympic teammates Izac Carracher and Mark Nicolaidis as the top two seeds for the tournament.
While Schubert and Hodges had not dropped a set going into the quarter-finals, they were outgunned by a determined Chinese team to send them to a fifth place finish.
Nicolaidis and Carracher beat fellow Aussies Josh Howat and Luke Ryan in the quarters before requiring three sets to beat their Iranian opponents in the semis to advance to the final.
D’Artagnan Potts and Jack Pearse are both on Asian Championships debut and have only played two Asian Tour events together as a combination.
They came in as the third seeds and needed to come from behind against their Kazakh opponents in the quarter-finals to advance to the final four.
There they met Wu Jiaxin and Ha Likejiang who had earlier ousted Hodges and Schubert and wanted to add another Australian team to their tally having earlier this year been bundled out of a place at the Paris Olympics by Nicolaidis and Carracher in Continental qualifying.
Potts and Pearse played to the standard required to reach a Continental Championship final, downing the Chinese pair in two long sets to set up the biggest match of their careers.
In the women’s draw, Australia had three teams through to the quarter-finals however only Stefie Fejes and Jana Milutinovic were able to make it through to the semi-finals.
After dropping the opening set to their Chinese opponents, the Aussies levelled up the match to send it to a decider but went down 15-13 in the third in a match which lasted just under an hour.
They will now face a Japanese duo they have defeated twice before, including a pool round clash at this tournament in 2023.
2024 ASIAN BEACH VOLLEYBALL CHAMPIONSHIPS
Santa Rosa PHI
Day 3 – Sunday 10 November
WOMEN’S BRONZE MEDAL MATCH
4pm AEDT | 2-Stefie Fejes/Jana Milutinovic (AUS) v 7-Asami Shiba/Saki Maruyama
MEN’S GOLD MEDAL MATCH
7pm AEDT | 1-Mark Nicolaidis/Izac Carracher (AUS) v 2-D’Artagnan Potts/Jack Pearse
