Beach duos fail in the rain – victories to brazilians

For days, continuous rain dampened the rough german tournament, whose spectator response remained far below expectations. Holtwick/semmler missed out on third place with a 0:2 loss to the italians greta cicolari/marta menegatti. "The tournament here was a good rehearsal for london, because the weather forecasts there also predict a lot of rain," said semmler. She and her partner holtwick had already lost 2-1 in the semifinals to the top-seeded chinese team chen xue/xi zhang and had to be satisfied with 18,400 dollars in prize money.

The local heroes sara goller/laura ludwig as well as the two men’s teams julius brink/jonas reckermann and jonathan erdmann/kay matysik (all berlin) qualified for the olympics had already failed early and had disappointed the few spectators. "We really didn’t play well," admitted reckermann.

But his partner brink did not take the performance in berlin too tragically. "We will draw our conclusions from this. But it would be wrong to infer from our performance that our chances for the olympics had deteriorated," said the 30-year-old from berlin. And reckermann promised: "in london we should be back on our toes again."Goller also warned against jumping to conclusions about her participation in the olympics: "the berlin tournament has nothing to do with london for the time being."

Both wins and the 43 500 US-dollar prize money went to brazil. The men’s final was won 2-1 by the number 1 seeds alison cerutti/emanuel rego against the americans jacob gibb/jean rosenthal. Franca larissa and juliana felisberta da silva beat the chinese team chen xue/xi zhang 2-0 on sunday and underlined their role as favorites for the olympic gold medal in london.

The organizers have failed in their goal of setting a world record for volleyball spectators on saturday. In a weather mix of rain and sunshine, a maximum of 6,000 spectators found their way to the waldbuhne, with the band culcha candela still attracting an audience. The previous record of 18,000 spectators, set at the olympic indoor volleyball finals of the manner in beijing, was clearly missed. Nevertheless laura ludwig enthused about the atmosphere in the waldbuhne: "it was super awesome. Even if there were only a few hundred people, the atmosphere on the center court was bombastic. I have goose bumps on the back tracked."