With three men’s teams competing in the main draw of this week’s Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Elite16 event in Uberlandia, Austria have big expectations for the tournament and the first results obtained by their duos at Praia Clube on Thursday couldn’t have been more promising.

The first day of the main draw ended up as a perfect one for the Austrians, who won all four matches in which they were involved and positioned themselves in good spots for the conclusion of pool play on Friday.

· Watch all matches at the Beach Pro Tour Elite16 event in Uberlandia live on Volleyball TV.

Martin Ermacora and Moritz Pristauz were the most successful Austrian duo on Thursday as the two won both their Pool A matches and sit at the top of the standings entering the second day of pool play in Uberlandia.

Seeded ninth, the two players also caused the biggest upset of the first day of the main draw, taking down the silver medallists of the 2022 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships and top-seeded Brazilians Vitor Felipe and Renato Lima in the tie-breaker (22-24, 21-14, 15-12).

“In this pool, every point counts,” Ermacora told Volleyball World. “Because of that, it was great that we won the second set against Vitor/Renato by a good margin. They are a really good team, which just got silver at the World Championship, and it’s funny that we also played them in Brazil earlier this season at the Itapema Challenge. The wind was circulating a lot and that caused problems to us in the first set as we ended up giving up a four-point lead. But it was a big win for us.”

Uberlandia Elite16 - Match Schedule and Results

A few hours later, they overcame another home team, qualifiers Arthur Mariano and Adrielson dos Santos, this time in two sets (23-21, 21-15). On Friday, they complete their pool play schedule against Norwegians Hendrik Mol and Mathias Berntsen at 12:00 local time (15:00 GMT).

In Pool B, Robin Seidl and Philipp Waller got a head start with their straight-set (21-14, 21-13) victory over Uruguayans Hans Hannibal and Marco Cairus. Coming from a fourth-place finish last week in Cape Town, the Austrians are confident they can make another semifinal run this week.

“It was a long trip from South Africa to Uberlandia and we found completely different conditions here,” Seidl reflected. “It’s a little bit warmer and windy here and the sand is deeper too. We know that if we can play at our best, we can make it to the semifinals again and to do that we need to focus on us, on recovering from the traveling and adjusting to the conditions.”

On Friday, Seidl and Waller will try to confirm one of the top two spots in their pool and advance to Saturday’s quarterfinals. The Austrians will play twice, facing Norway’s Anders Mol/Christian Sørum at 8:00 local time (11:00 GMT) and Chile’s Vicente Droguett/Noe Aravena at 13:00 local time (16:00 GMT).

Julian Hörl and Alexander Horst completed Austria’s winning day in Uberlandia with their sweep (21-19, 21-14) of Türkiye’s Safa Urlu/Hasan Mermer in Pool C. On Friday, they will play Brazil’s Andre Loyola/George Wanderley at 9:00 local time (12:00 GMT) and Argentina’s Nicolas Caprogrosso/Tomas Capogrosso at 14:00 local time (17:00 GMT).

The only other team to end the day with a pair of wins in Uberlandia was the one of Brazilians Evandro Goncalves and Vinicius Freitas, in Pool D. They first topped compatriots Bruno Schmidt and Saymon Barbosa in three sets (19-21, 21-15, 15-11) and then defeated another Brazilian team, qualifiers Pedro Solberg and Arthur Lanci, 2-0 (22-20, 21-16).

Quick links:
Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Uberlandia Elite16
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