Americans Kelly Chen and Sarah Hughes won the World Beach Volleyball Championship on Sunday, solidifying their status as Olympic gold medal favorites.
Chen and Hughes, USC phenoms of the mid-2010s. We reunited last year after being apart for four years.defeated Brazilians Ana Patricia and Duda 21-16, 24-22 in Tlaxcala, Mexico, to claim the title.
Ana Patricia and Duda won last year’s world title and entered this year’s world tournament as the top-ranked team, winning 19 consecutive international tournaments to reach Sunday’s final.
Chen and Hughes, who finished third in the world rankings, became the first U.S. team to win a world title since 2009 and the third U.S. women’s team overall.
Others included Misty Mae-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings (three-peat from 2003 to 2007), and Jennifer Kesey and April Ross (2009).
Chen (née Claes) and Hughes won the first four tournaments after reuniting last fall, but missed the semifinals in the last three international tournaments before making it to the world championships.
Last week, they lost the third and final match of group play and dropped sets in three of their four tournament matches leading up to the final.
The 28-year-olds aim to become the third U.S. women’s team to win an Olympic title, following May Treanor and Walsh (three-peat from 2004 to 2012) and Tokyo’s Alix Kleinman and Ross. We look forward to 2024.
Kleinman, 33, and Ross, 41, will not defend their titles together in Paris next year. Kleinman recently returned from childbirth with her new partner. Ross is still coaching during her pregnancy and may never play internationally again.
Early Sunday morning, Americans Taryn Cross and Kristen Nass defeated Olympic silver medalists Mariafe Artacho and Tariqua Clancy of Australia 15-21, 21-19, 15-8 in the bronze medal match.
This is the first time the United States has won two medals at the same world championships since the 2012 Olympics, when May-Treanor and Walsh Jennings defeated Kesey and Ross in the gold medal match.
In Sunday’s men’s final, Czech Republic’s Ondrzej Peršić and David Schweiner defeated Sweden’s David Orman and Jonathan Helwig 21-15, 17-21, 15-13.
Until this year, the Czech men’s team had never reached the quarterfinals of an Olympic or world championship.
The U.S. men’s team has finished fourth in three consecutive worlds. In the bronze medal match, Poland’s Michał Brill and Bartosz Wosiak defeated Theo Brunner and Trevor Crabb 21-17, 21-18.
Brunner, 38, and Crabb, 34, have overtaken Tri Vaughn and Chaim Schalk for second place in the U.S. Olympic qualifying standings with eight months until Paris. Each country can qualify up to two teams each for men and women to compete in the Olympics.
Andy Benesch and Miles Partain of the U.S. men’s top team lost in the quarterfinals at the world championships.
