BRASILIA, Brazil, April 20, 2025.- After taking bronze in Quintana Roo and silver in Saquarema, USA’s Kristen Nuss & Taryn Brasher snatched the gold in Brasilia as the third Elite event of the year on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour came to a close in the Brazilian capital on Sunday. This way, the American Paris 2024 Olympians topped the podium for the first time since the 2024 Tour Finals in Doha and added the ninth gold and the 15th medal overall to their impressive Beach Pro Tour collection.
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Carol Solberg & Rebecca Cavalcanti put up a solid fight in the final but had to settle for silver in front of the Brazilian home crowd. It was already their second medal out of only four Tour appearances together as a team. Three weeks ago, the experienced Brazilians triumphed at the Quintana Roo Elite.
Another Brazilian team, reigning Olympic champions Ana Patricia Ramos & Eduarda Santos Lisboa (Duda), completed the podium with bronze, their first Beach Pro Tour medal in almost a year, or since they conquered the gold at this same venue in May 2024. The former world champions and former number one team in the World Ranking have now piled up a remarkable showcase of eight gold, two silver and five bronze medals on the Tour.
Second-seeded Nuss & Brasher overcome their fifth-seeded opponents’ strong performance and the noise from a fantastic Brazilian home crowd on the stands during Sunday’s gold medal showdown to put together a narrow 2-0 (22-20, 21-19) victory. The Americans were in the lead through most of the first set of the match, but in the money, Carol & Barbara took control and reached the first set point at 19-18. Nuss & Brasher reacted with three points in a row and closed the set with an ace from Nuss. Twice in the second set, the US team opened a wide lead and twice the home favorites closed the gap as it eventually came down to a 19-19 tie. Nuss & Brasher stayed focus and soon closed the set and the match with a powerful spike from Nuss for the winning point.
The better overall performance in offense made the big difference in tilting the balance Nuss & Brasher’s way, with Brasher emerging as the best scorer of the match with 24 points and the best attacker of the match with 20 kills, as well as the best blocker of the match with three stuffs to her name. Carol led the Brazilian pair with 17 points, including two aces and two kill blocks.
“Oh, my goodness! It was so difficult! If we could stop playing them multiple times, that would be great! They are incredible and we knew that in front of this home crowd it would be pretty rowdy and they would bring the passion like they always do. So we just tried to stick with each other and trust ourselves,” Nuss said on the court after the match.
“Kristen came in today and woke me up with a great enthusiastic ‘let’s go get gold today!’ But we had to fight against an amazing Brazilian team – they are both just so incredible – and we had to play in front of Brazilian fans that are just so rowdy, and so fun, and just love the game,” Brasher added.
The bronze medal game earlier on Sunday lasted three sets as Dutch qualifiers Emi van Driel & Wies Bekhuis, seeded 23rd in the 24-team main draw, put up a tough fight and even won the first set against the mighty Olympic champions, before 10th-seeded Ana Patricia & Duda managed to turn the course of the match around and celebrate a 2-1 (19-21, 21-15, 15-12) victory. It was mostly the unforced errors of the Dutch and the better blocking of the Brazilians that prompted the outcome of this match. Ana Patricia raised six kill blocks during the game and topped the charts with a match-high total of 20 points.
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