Argentina’s Bautista Amieva & Leo Aveiro topped the men’s standings at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Futures event in Messina to collect their fourth gold on the Tour. Italy’s Claudia Scampoli & Margherita Bianchin triumphed with home gold in the women’s competition.
Last year Amieva & Aveiro earned three consecutive Futures trophies in a row, in Ciro Marina, Leuven and Ljubljana, but the Messina gold was their first Tour medal in 2023, after the fifth places in Lecce and Lille and the fourth in Ios.
The eighth-seeded Argentineans lost only one match in Messina, the Pool A winners’ game, in which top-seeded Davide Benzi & Carlo Bonifazi of Italy managed a 2-1 (25-23, 17-21, 15-11) win. Later in the competition, Amieva & Aveiro got back at the Italians with a 2-0 (21-15, 21-12) shutout in the semifinals. That was after mastering another straight-set upset in the quarterfinals, 2-0 (21-17, 21-16) over third-seeded compatriots Julian Azaad & Maciel Bueno. In Sunday’s big final, 23-year-old Amieva and 26-year-old Aveiro battled through three sets against fifth-seeded Austrians Florian Schnetzer & Lorenz Petutschnig to celebrate a 2-1 (21-15, 17-21, 15-8) victory.
Schnetzer & Petutschnig had only dropped a set on the way to the Messina final. In the semis, they hammered out a 2-0 (21-18, 21-19) victory over fourth-seeded Italians Gianluca Dal Corso & Marco Viscovich to secure their second Beach Pro Tour podium, with back-to-back silvers in Ios the previous week and in Messina.
Dal Corso & Viscovich completed the podium after taking a forfeit victory in the third-place match against compatriots Benzi & Bonifazi. The bronze was the first Beach Pro Tour medal for the 22-year-old Italians as a team. Last year, Dal Corso had two Futures medals with Jakob Windisch as a partner, a Lecce gold and a Giardini Naxos bronze.
