RECIFE, Brazil — The avalanche was coming, and all but two in Recife, Brazil believed it could be held back.
Those two go by the names of Jorge Alayo and Noslen Diaz, a pair of sensational Cuban players who banged and bruised their way to the finals of the Recife Challenge, one thundering spike after the next.
Try as they might — and indeed, they tried it all — there was no stopping Arthur Mariano, Evandro Goncalves, and the inevitable onslaught of aces off his right hand, the demise that had met every team before them. They invited the crowd into the mix, never the wisest idea in Brazil, with the singing and dancing and chanting throng of thousands.
They got booed.
They started hot.
Evandro got hotter.
They peppered aces down the line.
Evandro accepted the challenge.
He aced them more.
Leads that stretched to four at one point for Cuba in the second set melted away quicker than the acai in bowls up and down the stands. Six times would Evandro ace Cuba in the finals in Brazil’s 21-15, 21-18 win, running his total to a mind-melting 37 for the tournament — 22 more than the next closest competitor, and eight more by the No. 2 (Alayo) and No. 3 (Tri Bourne) combined.
“Best server ever,” Bourne said as Evandro pounded an untouchable heater down Alayo’s line in the second set. Bourne would know as well as anyone. It was Evandro and Arthur who knocked out Bourne and Chaim Schalk in the previous night’s quarterfinals. They did a fine job on Evandro.
They held him to only, oh, five aces, his second lowest total for the tournament.
These are the types of performances Brazilian players are wont to put on at home. Evandro and Arthur’s first gold medal as a team came a little less than a year ago, at the Saquarema Challenge. Of the five tournaments held in Itapema, four have been won by Brazilians, the last three in a row to George Wanderley and Andre Loyola.
“When we play at home it feels amazing,” Evandro said. “It feels like home. It’s special.”
Tina Graudina, Anastasija Samoilova win second gold
Such a feeling is not reserved only for Brazilians. The crowd is perhaps the finest in the sport, a singing, swaying, cheering, bouncing bunch who lined the sidewalk to get into the stadium at 6:30 on Sunday morning. There wasn’t an empty seat the entire day, save for the two-hour intermission between the semifinals and medal rounds. And even if there are no Brazilian teams in the hunt, as there weren’t during the women’s medal matches and men’s bronze, it is no matter.
They’ll adopt a team as their own.
Tina Graudina, the former USC great, and Anastasija Samoilova became honorary, if not temporary, locals this week. The Latvians won every match they played, capping an undefeated week with a 21-18, 21-17 sweep over Canadian Cinderellas Sophie Bukovec and Heather Bansley for gold.
When they motioned for the crowd to do the wave, they happily obliged. Then they did so again. And again. For however long Graudina and Samoilova wished to bask in the victory.
“It’s so good to win in Brazil,” said Samoilova, whose only other gold medal came in the Philippines last fall.
“I’ll never forget this,” Graudina added.
Neither, for that matter, will Bansley and Bukovec. Their silver medal is a most unexpected one, climbing from Thursday’s qualifier all the way into the finals, knocking off top-seeded Brazilians Taina Silva and Victoria Lopes in the process.
“Manifesting,” Bukovec said all week. And she manifested it into the first Challenge or Elite16 medal of her and Bansley’s nascent partnership.
The partnerships for both bronze medalists, Aine Raupelyte and Monika Paulikiene of Lithuania and Javier and Joaquin Bello of England, are not nascent. The former have played together for a full season and counting, the latter have never played with anyone else.
Yet never before had Lithuania stood on a Challenge or Elite16 podium.
Sunday changed that for Paulikiene and Raupelyte, as they upset Germans Karla Borger and Sandra Ittlinger for bronze, winning 21-14, 17-21, 15-9.
“Obrigado, Brazil,” an emotional Paulikiene sad afterwards, putting her hands to her heart. “That’s it. That’s it.”
A medal round appearance for the Bellos, on the other hand, is becoming quite the norm. Three times in their last five tournaments have they made the semifinals, twice coming home with bronze. On Sunday, they topped Chase Budinger and Miles Evans in a 26-24, 15-21, 15-13 thriller. When asked what their plans were next, Joaquin, the younger of the twins by a few minutes, shrugged and said to rest.
The next tournament, down the road in Saquarema, beckons.
Where Evandro, and beach volleyball, feels like home.
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