Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 16, 2016 – Alison Cerutti and Bruno Schmidt kept up their pursuit of the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games gold medal with a 2-1 (21-17, 21-23, 16-14) victory over the Netherlands Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen at the Copacabana Beach Arena on Tuesday.
The number one seeds will now face Daniele Lupo and Paolo Nicolai in Thursday’s gold medal match.
The Brazilians are chasing the Olympic title to sit alongside the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships title that they won in the Netherlands in 2015. To continue that run they needed to get past their predecessors as world champions and they were pushed hard the whole way.
Alison and Bruno had four match points at the end of the second, but on each occasion the Dutch duo snuffed out the danged and then turned the tables to draw level.
Brouwer and Meeuwsen began the tie-break in good form, but eventually Alison’s power and Bruno’s agility brought them into proceedings. The Dutch saved yet another match point, but on the sixth Bruno spiked an Alison set to keep their golden dreams alive.
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Lupo and Nicolai held of the fearsome challenge of Russia’s Konstantin Semenov and Viacheslav Krasilnikov to win a repeat of this year’s European Championships final 2-1 (15-21, 21-16, 15-13).
The Italians appeared rattled in the first set, but calmed down to control the second. The tie-break swung both ways before Lupo and Nicolai took a grip with a few points to go.
After they let slip one match point, Lupo’s spike took them to the gold medal match.
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