Supported by Volleyball Empowerment, French beach volleyball shines at home in Lille

French duos pocketed four of the six medals on offer at last week’s Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Futures event in Lille. Ahead of hosting next year’s Olympic Games in Paris, French beach volleyball has been receiving coach support from the FIVB Volleyball Empowerment programme for both the men’s and the women’s national teams.

Since 2019, nearly 600,000 CHF has been invested in French beach volleyball, and the results from their home Futures tournament just add to the evidence of their successful growth.

The French pair of Elouan Chouikh-Barbez and Tom Altwies (pictured in the main photo, credits: cev.eu) topped the men’s podium in Lille, making headlines with their semifinal upset of top-calibre compatriots Youssef Krou and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat. The 21-year-olds conquered their first-ever Beach Pro Tour medal by going through the tournament undefeated in the five matches played and dropping only a set along the way.

Seeded 14th in the 16-team main draw, Chouikh and Altwies started off with Pool C wins over third-seeded Argentineans Bautista Amieva and Leo Aveiro, 2-0 (21-16, 21-17), and over Germany’s Jonas Sagstetter and Benedikt Sagstetter, 2-1 (15-21, 24-22, 15-10). In the quarterfinals, the French duo mastered a 2-0 (21-18, 21-19) shutout of Dutchmen Thijs Nijeboer and Mart van Werkhoven, before facing top-seeded Krou and Gauthier-Rat, the number 13 team in the FIVB World Ranking, in a battle for a spot in the final. Chouikh and Altwies produced a 2-0 (21-16, 21-19) upset and went on to take a 2-0 (21-17, 21-19) sweep of the gold medal match against ninth-seeded Belgian qualifiers Louis Vandecaveye and Gilles Vandecaveye, who claimed their second Beach Pro Tour medal, after another silver from the Ljubljana Futures last year.

Youssef Krou in action (Photo credits: cev.eu)

After losing to Chouikh and Altwies, the heavy favourites of the tournament, Krou and Gauthier-Rat, went on to secure a spot on the podium with a 2-0 (21-15, 21-17) victory over Sagstetter and Sagstetter in the bronze medal match. The world’s highest ranked French pair, consisting of 26-year-old Gauthier-Rat and Krou, who turned 34 the day after the tournament, reached the semifinals on a perfect run of three consecutive straight-setters: 2-0 (21-16, 21-14) over Switzerland’s Tinko Schnegg and Thibaud Colomb, 2-0 (21-14, 21-19) over the Vandecaveye brothers and 2-0 (21-16, 21-12) over Amieva and Aveiro.

French teams collected the silver and the bronze on the women’s side. Fourth-seeded Aline Chamereau and Clemence Vieira lost their first and their last matches of the tournament, both to eventual gold medallists Melanie Paul and Hanna-Marie Schieder of Germany, and went through four straight-set victories in between. They started with a 2-1 (19-21, 21-18, 15-13) defeat at the hands of the Germans, but advanced beyond pool play with a 2-0 (21-17, 21-9) shutout of the USA’s Katie Lindstrom and Tiffany Creamer. A 2-0 (21-7, 21-13) sweep of their eighthfinal match against compatriots Alex Merle and Emere Maau-Boutry was then followed by a 2-0 (21-18, 22-20) quarterfinal victory over another French duo, Elsa Descamps and Marine Kinna, and a 2-0 (21-17, 21-16) semifinal win over yet another pair of fellow French athletes, Anouk Dupin and Ophelie Lusson.

Spectacular dig by Clemence Vieira during the Lille final (Photo credits: cev.eu)

27-year-old Chamereau and 22-year-old Vieira went on to win the first set of the gold medal match, in which they met Paul and Schieder again, but then the Germans powered through the next two to claim a narrow 2-1 (18-21, 21-17, 18-16) victory. The Lille silver was the first Beach Pro Tour medal for the French pair, as was the gold for 13th-seeded Paul and Schieder, who were making their debut appearance on the Tour as a team and they made the journey from the qualifiers all the way to the top of the podium.

Seeded 16th in the 16-team women’s main draw, Dupin and Lusson, who lost to Chamereau and Vieira in the semis, grabbed the bronze after a 2-0 (21-13, 21-13) shutout of top-seeded Argentineans Maia Najul and Cecilia Peralta in the third-place match. It was actually the second time they swept the South Americans in the tournament, after the 2-0 (21-18, 21-11) win in the first match of pool play. Dupin and Lusson then lost the Pool A winners’ match to Descamps and Kinna by 2-0 (21-15, 21-12), but bounced back with a 2-0 (21-12, 21-16) eighthfinal victory over Canada’s Devin Corah and Adriel Goodman and a 2-0 (21-16, 21-18) quarterfinal upset of fifth-seeded Australians Jana Milutinovic and Stefanie Fejes. For 20-year-old Dupin, it was her first appearance at a world-level tournament. For her 27-year-old partner Lusson, the Lille Futures also marked a Beach Pro Tour debut.

The Lille Futures medallists (Photo credits: cev.eu)

A total of 54 teams representing 24 different countries from all five continental confederations took part in the Lille Futures.

Beach Pro Tour 2023 full event schedule