Olympics Beach
July 22, 2024
When Anders Mol and Christian Sorum won 18 gold medals over a stretch of 26 tournaments from 2018-2023, including a World Championship and a record-breaking four consecutive European Championships, it was widely considered to be a run of dominance the beach volleyball world was unlikely to ever see again.
We’re seeing it again.
David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig, Sweden’s indefatigable, electrifying duo, are still four years from proving they can sustain the level of play Norway did for six straight seasons. But what they have done since sweeping Mol and Sorum in the gold medal match of the 2023 Tepic Elite16 — their second win over Norway — is certifiably Norwegian. Since that win in Tepic, Sweden has gone on to win eight more golds, including a second straight European Championship, and is currently on a streak of 10 consecutive finals, four straight golds, and a 16-match unbeaten streak.
As the Paris Olympics approach this week, with the first match Saturday afternoon, it presents the inevitable question: Who is the favorite, the 22-year-old Swedes who have revolutionized the way the beach game is played, leaving the rest of the world in a futile search for answers that cannot be found, or Norway, the defending Olympic gold medalists who ushered in the current era of Scandinavian dominance?
Perhaps the better question: Does the rest of the field have a chance at gold?
David Ahman, Jonatan Hellvig, and a 44-percent shot at gold
The oddsmakers, and volleyball sabermatrician Brian Cook’s one million simulations of the Olympic Games via his analytical site, TruVolley, both, unsurprisingly, favor Sweden. Ahman and Hellvig are the world No. 1 by nearly 2,000 points, with Mol and Sorum a distant second. BetOnline has Sweden at +115 to win gold — heavier favorites than even Brazil’s Ana Patricia Silva and Duda Lisboa on the women’s side — while Norway is +400. When Cook ran one million simulations of the Olympics, Sweden won gold in 44 percent, made a final in 56 percent, and won a medal in nearly 70 percent. Mol and Sorum defended their Tokyo gold medal in 19 percent of those simulations and won a medal of a different color in another 27 percent.
To see an all-Scandanavian final would be the most fitting gold medal match since perhaps the all-American final of 1996, when Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes squared off with Mike Dodd and Mike Whitmarsh in Atlanta.
To do so will require both exceptional play and an exceptional dose of luck.
Beach volleyball fans — and American fans to be specific — will remember, with no particular fondness, the 2016 Olympic draw, in which the top two teams in the world, Brazil’s Alison Cerutti and Bruno Schmidt, and Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena, ran into one another not in the gold medal match, but the quarterfinals.
The match lived up to the billing, a 14-21, 21-12, 9-15 American loss in breezy conditions in front of a sold-out stadium, and as many expected, it proved to be the de facto gold medal match, as Bruno and Alison went on to win in front of a rollicking home crowd.
Should both Mol and Sorum and Ahman and Hellvig break pool, as they are heavily favored to do, it could come down to sheer luck if they wind up on the same side of the bracket or not.
And, of course, even if they are on opposing ends, it will require a massive effort to win the next three matches to make it to the finals.
Land mines everywhere
After pool play, land mines will be ubiquitous on the men’s side. After Mol and Sorum, the next likeliest team to win gold is not Germany’s Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler, they of seven straight top-fives in 2024, or Brazil’s George and Andre, owners of a world-leading five medals this season, or even the reigning world champs, Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner, but the No. 7 seed: Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot.
That’s how deep the men’s field is. When including Evandro Goncalves and Arthur Mariano — two golds and a silver this year — Poland’s Michal Bryl and Bartosz Losiak, who are coming off a silver at the Vienna Elite16; Italy’s Paolo Nicolai and Sam Cottafava and their two consecutive top-fives; and Steven Van de Velde and Matthew Immers, with six top-fives and a silver medal at the Brasilia Elite16, well, there will be no easy road when the round of 16 begins.
All of that, and we haven’t even mentioned the Americans.
Can Andy Benesh and Miles Partain, or Chase Budinger and Miles Evans, bring home the first American men’s beach volleyball Olympic medal since 2008?
TruVolley odds of an American medal: 13.12 percent
When Cook ran his simulations, Benesh and Partain medaled in 11.14 percent of them. Budinger and Evans? Just 1.98 percent.
Those numbers, when considering both the measureables — results, recent wins and losses, etc. — and intangibles — momentum, a recent breakthrough — make sense. Benesh and Partain have won just one medal since their honeymoon run this time last year, when they won bronze at the Ostrava Elite16, gold in Gstaad, and silver in Montreal, all within a month’s time. This season, they’ve won just 14 of their 29 matches and are 8-14 against teams who will be competing in Paris.
But the Benesh and Partain who showed up in Vienna two weeks ago, where they finished fifth, were an undeniably different version of the listless team who finished ninth in Gstaad the week before. If ever there were a time to rediscover the brilliant form they were in last summer, now is the time — and it seems they are doing just that, with a strong showing in Austria and a week training in Italy with Nicolai and Cottafava.
Even better news for American fans is that they are a virtual lock to break pool. Getting slotted into Pool D, alongside George and Andre, Cuba’s Jorge Alayo and Noslen Diaz, and Morocco’s Mohamed Abicha and Zouheir Elgraoui, is, suffice it to say, a gift. It is improbable that Morocco will win a set, much less a match, which will bode well for the point and set differential that tiebreaks for third-place teams are based upon. Benesh and Partain will, at the very least, break pool.
From there, given the aforementioned depth of talent, all bets are off.
Budinger and Evans have received no such gift. Instead, they are in what Cook has evaluated as the second-strongest pool, with France’s Arnaud Gauthier-Rat and Youssef Krou, Boermans and de Groot, and Spain’s Adrian Gavira and Pablo Herrera and their 10 Olympics between them.
Krou, however, is coming off an injury, and Budinger and Evans have won two of their three matches against Spain in 2024. Cook has the odds of Budinger and Evans breaking pool at 51.34 percent — less than two percent higher than France.
Every match in Pool F, then, will be appointment viewing.
As is every match that includes a Scandinavian team.
Who are the USA Beach Volleyball players?
For the uninitiated, popping in during the Olympic Games to cheer on the home teams, who are Andy Benesh and Miles Partain, and Chase Budinger and Miles Evans?
Partain is the youngest of the bunch, a 22-year-old from Pacific Palisades, California, a precocious talent who shattered the record for youngest player to make an AVP main draw when he did so in Hermosa Beach of 2017, qualifying with his brother, Marcus, when he was just 15 years and seven months old. In the seven years since, his improvement has been meteoric. Two years after his AVP debut, he became the youngest to win a NORCECA gold medal, when he and Paul Lotman stunned Chaim Schalk and Jeremy Casebeer in the semifinals and stood atop the podium in Jamaica. Later that summer, he was named the AVP Rookie of the Year, the first of many accolades on an increasingly lengthy resume, one that now includes Offensive Player of the Year (2022, 2023), MVP (2023), Team of the Year (2023), and Beach Pro Tour Rookie of the Year (2023).
Most of those, of course, were won alongside either Benesh or Lotman, both of whom will be joining Partain in Paris, Lotman as assistant coach to Mike Placek, Benesh as his 6-foot-9 partner. Benesh was raised 45 minutes south of Partain, in Palos Verdes, California, and, out of high school, would have been expected to make the indoor national team before beach. A four-year starter at USC as a middle, Benesh played professionally briefly in Switzerland before a litany of injuries took him out of the gym and into an office job he quickly hated.
To the beach he went — and to the beach he has thrived. The 2022 Most Improved Player was named the 2023 VolleyballMag AVP MVP, and he is now considered the best blocker in the United States, with the statistics and finishes to prove it. And at 29 years old, his is a name many will be hearing for years — a decade even — to come.
Budinger and Evans took a decidedly different route to Paris. While Benesh and Partain established an unimpeachable lead early in the qualifying period, Budinger and Evans made a late push in the fall of 2023 and surpassed Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner midway through the spring, clinching their spot in the final event.
For Budinger, a 36-year-old from Encinitas, California, qualifying puts him in rare air, one of the greatest dual-sport athletes of all-time. The former small forward taken in the second round of the 2009 NBA draft, Budinger played seven seasons in the league, guarding Kobe Bryant, winning co-MVP honors with Kevin Durant at the 2006 McDonald’s All-American Game, even competing in a dunk contest. But he was also one of the top indoor volleyball players in the United States in high school, and could have played college wherever he so chose.
Now he’s choosing the beach.
“The Olympics was always the goal,” he said on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter. “I always set goals and I always try to set my goals as high as possible and it always motivates me to have something to go for. When I switched, Olympics was always the goal. I wouldn’t have traveled internationally from the start if Olympics wasn’t the goal. My first year I was trying to get that experience because I knew at some point I would have a shot of making this Olympic run.”
When the Olympic run started, only one percent of those who responded to a poll expected Budinger and Miles Evans to qualify. The underdog role is one they have both embraced, and it’s one Evans has become quite familiar with throughout his career. The 6-foot-4, 34-year-old defender from Santa Barbara, California, has never won an AVP and didn’t win his first gold medal in a Beach Pro Tour event at the Challenge level or higher until last fall, when he and Budinger danced their way to a gold in Haikou, China. Then they won another two weeks later in Thailand, this one bronze.
But the message was sent: Evans, the guy who had been annually passed up on by the top American blockers year after year, was a legitimate threat to qualify.
This spring and early summer, they continued their torrid run, making the quarterfinals or better in six of eight tournaments and won a critical gold medal at the NORCECA Continental Championships, the tournament they both consider the one that pushed them into the Paris Olympic Games.
“That was by far the biggest,” Evans said. “It became the biggest tournament and the biggest match.”
Now, they have earned a far bigger stage, at a far bigger tournament, where every match will become their biggest match.
