Spain will be looking for the beach volleyball semi-finals on Wednesday in two ways. On the one hand, veterans Pablo Herrera and Adrián Gavira will face Norway in the quarter-finals at 9:00 p.m. On the other hand, earlier, at 5:00 p.m., Olympic debutants Daniela Álvarez and Tania Moreno will face Canada in the same round.
Herrera and Gavira are an institution. The former is playing his sixth Games at the age of 42. The latter is playing his fourth at the age of 36. “Pablo and Adri are legends of beach volleyball and Pablo is a legend of Spanish sport. They are very experienced. I highlight their ability to suffer and change the game plan on the fly. They are very professional at that, they know how to read a match and manage it,” praised the pair by the coach, Fran Marco, who has been working with the men for six years and with the women for eight.
Herrera won Olympic silver in Athens 2004 alongside Javier Bosma, and Gavira has been his shadow on the sand for 15 years after joining Raúl Mesa in another Olympic cycle. “I am not surprised that both teams were in the quarterfinals,” says Marco, “the objective was to advance from the group and then in beach volleyball any team in the top 15 can win or lose against the rest. We are in the fight.”
Daniela Álvarez and Tania Moreno, who have been together for eight years, are also competing. “They are the dream. They are 22 years old and it is their first Games. Everything is new, they are seeing everything for the first time. And they have enormous potential. They have already been runners-up in Europe. The future depends on them. They are a very serious team,” Marco analyses, and anticipates “two very tough matches”: “The key to this sport is knowing how to make decisions at the right times, changing the direction of the game on the field, not depending on the coach, being independent. They know how to do it because of the experience they have, and they know how to do it because they have been taught that way.”
In the last year and a half, Spanish couples have played around 25 tournaments on the world circuit and this Wednesday they are chasing the Olympic semi-finals.
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