Behold the new beach volleyball world champions

History was created inside the Foro Italico on Sunday as the undisputed next generation of beach volleyball players shined on a breathless final day at the Beach Volleyball World Championship in Rome.

Unstoppable Vikings Anders Mol, 24, and Christian Sørum, 26, secured the men’s world title to become the youngest team ever to hold both Olympic and world titles.

The Norwegians were joined on the top of the podium by brilliant Brazilians Eduarda ‘Duda’ Santos Lisboa, 23, and Ana Patricia Ramos, 24, who won their first world crown – 11 years after their compatriots Larissa Franca and Juliana Silva scooped the same title inside the same venue.

Norwegians living the dream

Mol and Sørum burst onto the scene in 2018, taking three world tour titles but have quickly become the sport’s most recognizable stars after a string of successes, cumulating in Olympic gold in Tokyo last year.

Having won bronze at the Hamburg world championship in 2019, their sights have always been set on world glory – and their comfortable straight sets (21-15, 21-16) win over Brazil’s Renato Lima and Vitor Felipe finally saw the duo achieve their goal.

Blocker Mol, who was a menace at the net all evening, told Volleyball World: “We’ve been dreaming about winning the World Championship since we were little kinds watching the Stavanger event in 2009 for the first time.

“Our partnership is still kind of recent, we just started playing together four years ago. We look back at that tournament in Klagenfurt back in 2016, when we won right off the first matches, and we think ‘What were we doing there?’

“Now we have some titles also under our belts and it’s still really hard to realize for us what is it that we’re living, because this is just a dream.”

The men’s podium was completed by 2017 world champions Andre Loyola Stein and George Wanderely from Brazil as they fought back to win bronze by beating American pair Chaim Schalk and Theo Brunner 15-21, 21-17, 15-11.

New wave of Brazilians hit top spot

The women’s event belonged to Duda and Ramos – the youngsters, just like Mol and Sørum – dropped just one set in their eight matches across the 10 days in the Italian capital.

Having won the Youth Olympics and two youth World Championships together, the South Americans celebrated their first senior crown with victory over Canadians Brandie Wilkerson and Sophie Bukovec 21-17, 21-19.

Duda said: “I’m so happy that I’m out of words to describe my feelings. It’s really a dream coming true. I’m just so happy with the result of our work. We were able to put everything we trained in to work and every match was better than the previous one. I have to thank my partner, our team, our sponsors and family members because we wouldn’t have done it without them.”

There was heartbreak in the bronze medal match as Swiss star Joana Heidrich suffered a match-ending shoulder injury in the second set when the blocker and teammate Anouk Vergé-Dépré were in command against Germans Cinja Müller and Svenja Tillman.

As a sign of unity and respect for their stricken fellow athlete, Müller and Tillmann stepped up to the podium to receive their bronze medal with a Swiss jersey bearing Heidrich’s name.

Information and photo source : International Volleyball Federation