Eylon Elazar & River Day got together for just that one tournament and brought the gold home to Israel. The one-off pairing started its participation at the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Futures in Ios from the qualifiers and went all the way to the top of the podium undefeated, to claim the first gold on the Tour for either of its members. Germany’s Jonas Sagstetter & Benedikt Sagstetter and Latvia’s Ardis Bedritis & Arturs Rinkevics completed the men’s podium. Another German duo, Julia Sude & Lea Sophie Kunst, claimed the women’s gold in Greece, accompanied on the podium by Australia’s Stefanie Fejes & Georgia Johnson and Ukraine’s Maryna Hladun & Tetiana Lazarenko.

23-year-old Eylon Elazar usually competes alongside Kevin Cuzmiciov, while 22-year-old River Day usually partners with Idan Katriel, but the two joined forces for the Futures in Ios and achieved the first Beach Pro Tour gold medal in their careers. The Israeli team started from Wednesday’s qualifiers and six wins in a row later they triumphed as Ios champions. Seeded seventh in the main draw, Elazar & Day celebrated a 2-1 (21-16, 10-21, 15-8) semifinal victory over third-seeded Ardis Bedritis & Arturs Rinkevics on Saturday, and followed up with a 2-1 (14-21, 21-17, 15-9) comeback from a set down in the final showdown against fifth-seeded Jonas Sagstetter & Benedikt Sagstetter.

The German team crowned their four-game winning streak with a 2-1 (18-21, 21-14, 15-10) comeback in their semifinal against Greece’s Stavros Ntallas & Dimitrios Chatzinikolaou, seeded 11^th, to make it to the team’s first-ever Beach Pro Tour final. The silver they settled with was the second medal for the duo on the Tour, after their bronze at last year’s Baden Futures.

In the third place match, Bedritis & Arturs Rinkevics mastered a 2-0 (21-13, 21-16) over the home favourites to take the bronze and make it to the pair’s third Beach Pro Tour podium.

36-year-old German Olympian Julia Sude, a gold medallist of the last edition of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Finals in 2021, who had previously earned Beach Pro Tour medals at Elite16 and Challenge events, teamed up with 22-year-old Lea Kunst for the start of this season. In Ios, they celebrated the duo’s first Beach Pro Tour podium, snatching the gold after five consecutive wins and dropping only a set along the way.

In their semifinal, the fifth-seeded German team stopped the winning run of the top-seeded Ukrainian pair, also a tandem between experienced 31-year-old Maryna Hladun and young 20-year-old talent Tetiana Lazarenko, and delivered a narrow 2-0 (21-19, 21-19) upset. In the other semifinal, 19-year-old Stefanie Fejes and 25-year-old Georgia Johnson of Australia managed to defeat USA’s Madison Shields & Delaney Peranich in straight sets, 2-0 (21-12, 22-20), and also reached the final undefeated, securing their team’s second consecutive podium, after earning gold at the Krakow Futures last week.

In the gold medal showdown, Sude & Kunst produced a 2-0 (21-15, 21-19) upset of second-seeded Fejes & Johnson of Australia to top the podium. Hladun & Lazarenko bounced back with a 2-0 (21-16, 21-13) sweep of the bronze medal match against ninth-seeded Shields & Peranich.

25 men’s and 25 women’s teams representing a total of 21 different countries took part in the Ios Futures. Another two Futures events are taking place this week in Europe - a men’s tournament in Geneva, Switzerland and a double-gender competition in Messina, Italy.

Ios Futures: results and standings

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