Neither team had dropped a set en route to the final. On Saturday, Norway’s Anders Berntsen Mol and Chistian Sandlie Sorum kept that record intact as they won the men’s beach volleyball gold at Tokyo’s Shiokaze Park.
Reigning World champions Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy of the Russian Olympic Committee had to settle for the silver. The Norwegians won the gold-medal match 21-17, 21-18 in 40 minutes.
It was the first Olympic medal in beach volleyball for players from both Norway and Russia. The United States and Brazil had been dominating the sport -- which made its debut at Atlanta in 1996 – claiming 10 of the 18 medals before Tokyo, where neither reached the podium.
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The bronze too was claimed by a nation that hadn’t won any Olympic medal before on the beach – Qatar. Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan defeated Martins Plavins and Edgars Tocs of Latvia 21-12, 21-18 in the play-off to win the historic medal for the Arab nation with a population of less than three million. It was, for the record, Qatar’s third medal at Tokyo.
A little after Younousse and Tijan claimed their medal, winning their match in 41 minutes, the Norwegian and the Russian pairs took the centre stage. It was Krasilnikov and Stoyanovskiy who took the lead. But from 1-5 and then 4-8 down, Mol and Sorum rallied back.
After equalising at 8-8, they raced to an 18-13 lead. Though the Russians saved three set points, they could not stop their rivals from running away with the opening set, and then the match.
The results:
Final: Anders Berntsen Mol & Chistian Sandlie Sorum (NOR) bt Viacheslav Krasilnikov & Oleg Stoyanovskiy 21-17, 21-18.
Bronze-medal match: Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan (QAT) bt Martins Plavins and Edgars Tocs (LAT) 21-12, 21-18.
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