Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 11, 2016 - The “cool and clam” competitiveness of Nivaldo Diaz and Sergio Gonzalez was on display again here Wednesday morning as the Cubans completed the Beach Volleyball “sweep” of Pool D at the Rio 2016 Olympic Games by defeating Canadians Ben Saxton and Chaim Schalk.
In winning their third-straight match in the competition at the 12,000-seat “Coliseu on Copacabana”, Diaz and Gonzalez posted a 2-0 (21-15, 21-18) win over Saxton and Schalk in 35 minutes. Earlier in the competition, the Cubans defeated other highly-regarded FIVB World Tour teams from Brazil and Latvia in a pair of three-set matches.
With the win, the Cubans advance as the fourth-seeded team in the elimination bracket and will play their first “knock-out” contest either Friday or Saturday against a team that placed third in one of the five other pools. The Canadians fate will be determined in a later Pool D match Thursday pitting Evandro Goncalves and Pedro Salgado of Brazil against Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins of Latvia.
A win by the Latvians would eliminated Evandro and Pedro, who started the competition as the highest-ranked team in Pool D. A win by the Brazilians over Samoilovs and Smedins would force a three-way tie in the group with the two teams with the highest point ratio among the three tying teams will advance to the next round with a potential “lucky loser” match later Thursday at 11 p.m. (local time).
Saxton and Schalk currently have 0.9813 points ratio among the three possible tying pairs as the Canadians lost in three sets to Samoilovs and Smedins and defeated Evandro and Pedro in another three-setter. For those matches, the Latvians have a 1.0588 point ratio and the Brazilians’ figure is 0.9814.