Jump-setting Swedes David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig are not the types to take their time.
The beach volleyball pioneers were the No. 1 team in the world by the age of 22, a time when many of their competitors had not yet switched from indoor volleyball to the sand. And when Ahman and Hellvig reached the final at their first Olympics, they quickly claimed the gold medal.
Sweden defeated Germany in 36 minutes to win the men’s beach volleyball championship at the Paris Games on Saturday night, with a score of 21-10, 21-13 against Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler in the final match at the Eiffel Tower Stadium.
One night after the Brazilian women won gold against Canada in a close three-set match, the men’s final lacked any suspense.
“Everything just worked for us. And I still don’t believe how we managed to play that well, actually,” Hellvig said. “And then the match was just over.”
It was the second-fastest match of the men’s competition and the biggest blowout (excluding one injury forfeit). And it happened in the most important game of the Olympics.
“I would love to fight more, to have a closer match,” Wickler said. “We played many games against them — also very close. We never lost that hard against them. And on this stage, it’s very disappointing for sure.”
The quick and one-sided match allowed the Swedes in the 13,000-strong crowd under the lights of the famous Paris landmark to start celebrating early.
With their faces painted in yellow and blue, they waved flags and chanted in Swedish for the first Olympic beach volleyball medal in their country’s history. When it was over, the venue DJ played ABBA and the fans sang along.
Mamma Mia, indeed.
“We wanted to do our best game of the year, right now in front of this amazing crowd, in front of so many people. And everybody’s watching,” the 6-foot-11 (2.11 meter) Ehlers said. “And I think, maybe, that’s kind of the problem.”
The Swedes used a new playing style to reach the finals of seven major international tournaments in a row, which led them to become No. 1 in the world rankings this spring.
With their “Swedish jump-set,” the player jumps to spike but instead passes the ball sometimes, forcing opponents to defend against both moves at once.
The pair had a tough time in the preliminary round, losing two of their three group-stage matches. They needed three sets to defeat Cuba in the round of 16 but did not lose another set after that — and only trailed once, briefly, in the next three matches.
On the match point on Saturday night, Ahman scored a second-touch kill shot into the corner to win the game.
“When we got the last point in, I just couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Like, looking over at the scoreboard like, ‘Oh, we just won. What happened?’”
The silver medal is Germany’s first men’s beach volleyball medal since winning gold at the 2012 London Games, though the women won the gold in Rio de Janeiro four years later.
“The moment we got the medal around our neck, it feels amazing. And even the next moment we remember what we’ve done in the final and feel sad again. So it’s an up and down,” Ehlers said. “I think it needs more time to realize and to appreciate more what we’ve done the last two weeks.”
Wickler was the only one in the match with previous Olympic experience, finishing fifth in Tokyo. In the same year, Ahman and Hellvig won the under-21 world championship.
“The last few years, our development and improvements as a team have been so fast,” Hellvig said. “We don’t really know how we did it, but it just feels amazing.”
Earlier on Saturday, Norway defeated Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan 21-13, 21-16. Younousse and Tijan had won the bronze medal in Tokyo.
This was the second consecutive Olympics where Anders Mol and Christian Sorum won medals, making it a proud achievement for Scandinavian countries known more for snow than for sand.
In the women’s competition, Brazil won gold, a year after the sport’s traditional home was left without a medal for the first time since beach volleyball was added to the Summer Games in 1996.
Unfortunately for the Americans, who had won seven of the first 12 gold medals in the sport, they did not win any medals this time, marking the first time in history they were shut out.
