Herrera and Gavira win Olympic duel for main draw spot in Vienna

The last tournament before their fourth Olympic appearance as partners, the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Vienna Elite16 started well for Pablo Herrera and Adrián Gavira as the Spanish veterans were among the four men’s teams to overcome the qualifier in the Austrian capital on Wednesday.

• Watch the Beach Pro Tour Vienna Elite16 matches live on VBTV

Herrera, who’s set to compete in the Games for a record sixth time, and Gavira, who will make his fourth appearance in a few weeks, had to win an ‘Olympic preview’ in Vienna as they were faced with French Youssef Krou and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat, who will be their pool opponents in Paris, in the second round of the qualifier and triumphed in straight sets (23-21, 21-17).

The Spanish were placed in Pool B in the Vienna Elite 16 and will play Norway’s Anders Mol/Christian Sørum, Qatar’s Cherif Younousse/Ahmed Tijan and Chile’s Marco Grimalt/Esteban Grimalt in the first phase of the tournament.

Australians Izac Carracher and Mark Nicolaidis, who are also qualified for Paris 2024, overcame the Vienna qualifier too, beating the English Bello twins Javier and Joaquin in the tie-breaker (21-19, 16-21, 15-10). In the main draw, they will have the Netherlands’ Matthew Immers/Steven van de Velde and Stefan Boermans/Yorick de Groot and Austria’s Julian Hörl/Alexander Horst as their opponents in Pool D.

Olympic-bound Australia’s Thomas Hodges/Zachery Schubert and Italy’s Adrian Carambula/Alex Ranghieri also played in the Vienna Elite16 qualifier, but couldn’t advance. The Aussies fell to Brazilians Adrielson dos Santos and Arthur Mariano, who made it to the main draw. The fourth and final berth went to Australia’s Paul Burnett and Chris McHugh.