Beach volleyball, fifth place at the World Championships for Valentina Gottardi and Reka Orsi Toth
Valentina Gottardi and Reka Orsi Toth’s journey to the World Championships being held in Adelaide, Australia, ended in fifth place. Thus, the Azzurre’s path came to a halt against Brazil in the match that counted for access to the semifinals; the reigning Italian champions were in fact overcome 0-2 (16-21, 19-21) by the strong greenoro pair composed of Thamela/Victoria, number one in the tournament, number one in the FIVB ranking, dominating Pool E and coming from the successes obtained against the French Placette/Richard (21-17, 15-21, 19-17) and against the Ukrainian Lazarenko/Romaniuk (21-18, 11-21, 15-8) in the round of 16 and round of 16, respectively.
A high difficulty match for the Italian pair. Intense and balanced match in both sets, but with the Brazilian lineup better and more concrete in exploiting the key moments of the match. Balanced the trend of the first fraction of the game; in fact, after being tied at 8, it was Thamela/Victoria who took the lead (11-13), ran away (13-18) and found the 16-21 that decreed the end of the first set. Equilibrium also marked the course of the first part of the second set (3-3, 7-7, 11-11); it was then the Brazilians who again found the stretch (12-15, 14-17), but unlike in the first set, the Azzurri were good at staying in the match, getting back in touch (16-17) and re-establishing parity at 18-18. The champions of Italy managed to put their noses out of joint (19-18) before, however, suffering the comeback of their rivals, who were determined and good at finding the final spurt that set the score at 19-21.
Fifth place finish then for Valentina Gottardi and Reka Orsi Toth and a positive balance for the young Italian athletes, as known, at their first experience as a pair in a rainbow event. A solid and convincing path of the athletes of DT Caterina De Marinis; important performances that only confirmed the state of growth of the azzurre after not even one year of activity. The future of Italian women’s beach volleyball is marked, and Valentina Gottardi and Reka Orsi Toth are preparing to face the next commitments with an extra awareness, that of being able to fight on equal terms against any opponent.
For Valentina Gottardi this is the second fifth place in a rainbow review, after the one obtained in 2022 in Rome together with Marta Menegatti; for Reka Orsi Toth, on the other hand, this is the best world placement after the 2022 rainbow review in Rome, which was closed in the group stage due to the injury of her sister Viktoria Orsi Toth.
Adelaide’s is the seventh quarterfinal played by an Italian pair in a rainbow event after those obtained by Laura Bruschini and Annamaria Solazzi in Klagenfurt (Austria) in 2001, by Greta Cicolari and Marta Menegatti in Stare Jablonki (Poland) in 2013, by Marta Menegatti and Viktoria Orsi Toth in Hamburg (Germany) in 2019, and once again by Marta Menegatti paired with Valentina Gottardi in Rome in 2022. In the men’s tournament, however, this result had been achieved by Enrico Rossi and Adrian Carambula and Daniele Lupo and Paolo Nicolai, both in 2019 in Hamburg, Germany.
