The Peninsula
Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan finished fifth in the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Swatch Major Gstaad after going down to their Brazilian counterparts in Round 3 yesterday.
In yesterday’s second match in the main draw, Evandro Gonçalves Oliveira Júnior and Bruno Oscar Schmidt beat the Qatari pair 2-1 (20-22, 23-21, 15-10) in a keen tuscle to make it to the semi-finals of the $600,000 five-star event in Gstaad, Switzerland.
Finishing fifth in the tournament also earned Cherif and Tijan a prize cheque for $12,000.
Earlier yesterday, Cherif and Tijan defeated Latvia’s Martins Plavins and Edgars Tocs 2-0 (26-24, 21-19).
In the pool stage, the reigning Asian champions beat their Chilean counterparts before clinching their second win in Group C against Russia’s Ilya Leshukov and Konstantin Semenov.
Today, Oliveira Júnior and Schmidt, seeded 7th in Gstaad and ranked 4th in the FIVB Tour, will meet Anders Mol and Christian Sorum of Norway in the first semi-final.
The second semi-final match will feature two teams that shared the Rio 2016 Olympic podium as 21st-seeded Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen of The Netherlands challenge 12th-seeded Daniele Lupo and Paolo Nicolai of Italy.