Qinzhou, China, October 4, 2018 – USA’s Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb stunned Russia’s Taras Myskiv and Valeriy Samoday 2-0 (21-18, 21-9) to win the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Qinzhou 3-star gold medal on Thursday.
Bourne and Crabb avenged their pool play loss to the Russian duo, who won all their matches before their defeat in the final.
The USA pair played consistently throughout the match, while the Russians showed signs of exhaustion towards the end of the match, giving away easy points to their rivals.
“We played them in pool play and they beat us, so we were expecting a tough match,” Crabb said. “We knew that we had to have a better game plan, which kind of showed after that first set. Tri Bourne was awesome and we’re so happy that we won the gold. We were both aggressive on defence and blocking, and we sided out consistently.”
“It was a huge victory for me and Trevor,” Bourne said. “This is the first FIVB World Tour event for me in two years, so it just means a lot to me to play at this level.”
Quick links - Beach volleyball:FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour - QinzhouFIVB.com - Beach volleyballLatest VideosFacebookTwitterInstagramIn the bronze medal match, Belgium’s Dries Koekelkoren and Tom van Walle recovered from Wednesday’s semifinal loss as they led early on and took full control of the match for a convincing finish against Australia’s Cole Durant and Damien Schumann 2-0 (21-13, 21-13).
“It’s a great feeling to be winning our first medal on an FIVB World Tour event,” Koekelkoren said. “We had a tough loss yesterday. We knew that we could beat the American team, but we did not have consistency and we made mistakes.
“We made a quick evaluation yesterday and tried to get our heads clear for this game because we know Australia can play a great game. The temperature was really high today and we saw that they struggled, so it was part of our tactic to make the move.”