Volleyball Empowerment helps Greece take historic medal

24-year-old Panagiotis Ioannidis and 38-year-old Thodoris Papadimitriou earned Greece’s first world-level podium in senior men’s beach volleyball last week, when they snatched the bronze at the Ios Futures event on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour.

Greek beach volleyball national teams have been receiving coach support from the FIVB Volleyball Empowerment programme since 2019, with a total investment of over CHF 150,000. In particular, Ioannidis and Papadimitriou have been benefitting from the latest project approved, which got underway earlier this year and is already bringing incredible results, not least of which is the country’s first ever world-level medal.

Seeded 15th in the 16-team main draw, the Greek pair (pictured in the main photo, credits: cev.eu) had a difficult start in Ios. They lost their opening match in Pool B to second-seeded Czechs Vaclav Bercik and Matyas Dzavoronok. They also lost the first set of their second match in overtime, but then mounted a furious comeback for survival, turning the game against strong seventh-seeded Germans Robin Sowa and Lukas Pfretzschner for a 2-1 (21-23, 26-24, 15-7) victory.

Ioannidis and Papadimitriou produced two more comebacks from a set down in a row. In the eighthfinal against Poland’s Igor Ciemachowski and Piotr Groszek, they eliminated the duo with a 2-1 (13-21, 21-15, 15-10) win, and in the quarterfinal against top-seeded Julian Azaad and Maciel Bueno, they upset the Argentineans in the tiebreaker, 2-1 (10-21, 21-19, 18-16).

After losing to eventual gold medallists Markus Mol and Jo Gladsoy Sunde of Norway 2-0 (21-17, 21-10) in the semifinals, the Greeks recovered with a 2-1 (21-18, 14-21, 15-13) victory over eighth-seeded Bautista Amieva and Leo Aveiro from Argentina in the bronze medal match.

“It's incredible that we managed to get this medal in this tournament,” said Papadimitriou. “We played fantastically with all the strength we had in the third-place final to reach this success. We didn't have much time to rest. We thought that it was very important for us, for the country, for everybody who stayed here to support us. I am very happy that we brought a medal to our country.”

For Papadimitriou, it was actually the second podium at a world competition, but the first one came at the youth level some 21 years ago, when he and Andreas Gortsianiouk took silver at the 2002 FIVB U18 World Championships in Xylokastro.

21-year-old Markus Mol, the third of the five Mol siblings and younger brother to Hendrik and reigning world and Olympic champion Anders, and his partner, 20-year-old Jo Gladsoy Sunde, claimed their second Beach Pro Tour gold, after winning the Warsaw Futures in 2022 as well. This time they did it “the hard way”, starting from the qualifiers and earning seven straight-set victories in a row. In the Ios final, the Norwegians, seeded 12th in the main draw, took a 2-0 (21-17, 27-25) shutout of sixth-seeded Austrians Florian Schnetzer and Lorenz Petutschnig who settled for silver, their first Beach Pro Tour medal.

Jo Gladsoy Sunde and Markus Mol in action during the Ios final (Photo credits: cev.eu)

The women’s gold went to 21-year-old Wies Bekhuis and 20-year-old Desy Poiesz, who made a Beach Pro Tour podium for the first time as a pair. In a tandem with Brecht Piersma, Bekhuis had a couple of Futures bronze medals in 2022. In the Ios final, the eighth-seeded Dutch duo managed a 2-0 (21-19, 21-18) victory over Austria’s Franziska Friedl and Katharina Schutzenhofer, seeded third, to complete a winning run of five consecutive games in the main draw.

Friedl and Schutzenhofer earned silver at their first international appearance together. Previously on the Beach Pro Tour, Schutzenhofer had a 2022 Maldives Challenge silver with Lena Plesiutschnig, and Friedl had a 2022 Budapest Futures bronze with Katharina Holzer.

A tense moment in the women’s final (Photo credits: cev.eu)

In a hard-fought third-place match in Ios, top seeds Maia Najul and Cecilia Peralta of Argentina overcame the resistance of fifth-seeded Danes Clara Windeleff and Sofia Bisgaard on the way to a 2-0 (21-18, 21-19) win. It was the third bronze for the South American duo on the Beach Pro Tour, after their Futures podiums at Lecce 2022 and 2023.

A total of 51 teams representing 27 different countries from all five continental confederations took part in the Ios Futures.

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

Beach Pro Tour 2023 full event schedule