Anders Mol and Christian Sørum also won the third group match of the World Sand Volleyball Tour in Brazil and qualified directly for the quarter-finals.

On Friday, there was a 17-21, 21-14, 17-15 win over French shooters Julien Lyneel and Rémi Bassereau in a game they had to work hard for victory. They won the match despite an unusually high number of errors, numbering 19. Many of them were service errors.

Volleyball TV commentator Travis Mewhirter was full of praise when he spoke about the Norwegian duo before the match started: – Enjoy the moment whenever you see Mol and Sørum playing beach volleyball! It’s like watching LeBron James, Lionel Messi, Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal or Wayne Gretzky. Just choose a sport, he says.

– These guys are the future GOATs (greatest of all time) in beach volleyball.

Simple mistakes

The Norwegians failed to live up to the hype in the first set and fell behind early on after several mistakes, including from Sørum. The French duo played consistently and held on to the lead until the set victory 21-17.

Lynel/Basserau also took the lead in the second set. It was even for a long time, but from 12-11 the Norwegians pulled away and forced a decisive third set with 21-14. Norway scored 11 of the last 14 points in the set.

Also in the deciding set, France initially led after Norwegian mistakes, but then Mol put in an ace on serve to make it 5-5, and finally Norwegian serves started to work. The Norwegian duo took a 12-8 lead and seemed to have decided, but four French points in a row equalized.

France saved two match points, but not the third.

Mol and Sørum won their first two matches on Thursday in straight sets. First 21-19, 21-15 against the Italians Samuele Cottafava/Paolo Nicolai then 21-17, 22-20 against the Czechs Ondrej Perusic/David Schweiner.

rising stars

Lyneel, 33, and Bassereau, 24, have been playing together since last fall. They have already shown that on a good day they can beat anyone, and they should be an attraction at the home Olympics next year.

The French entered the tournament via qualifying, where they eliminated distinguished Chilean brothers Marco and Esteban Grimalt in the deciding round. They lost their first two group matches in straight sets and are expelled from the tournament.

(© NTB)