After a rest day, Aussie female beach volleyballers Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy together with men’s pairing Izac Carracher and Mark Nicolaidis will return to centre court at the Eiffel Tower Stadium on Monday.
Izac and Mark are the first of the Aussies to play at 5:00pm AEST where they will meet Italian pair Cottafava/Nicolai.
It’s an unknown match up, with the teams having never played on the Beach Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour before.
The Australians will be looking to bounce back after a tough round one loss to world number one Sweden.
Izac is excited for the opportunity to take on such a quality pairing on the big stage.
“The Italians are a really fun pair to watch,” he said.
“Nicolai, the older of the two and the blocker, was the 2016 Rio silver medalist, so he’s been around the block plenty of times, this is his fourth Games.”
“He’s super experienced and now he’s paired up with a young blood in Cottafava and they are doing some awesome things on the world tour and playing some really good volleyball and coming into the Games in pretty strong form their Pro 16 tournaments so we know it’s going to be a really tough battle.
“We’re definitely going to have to play our best volleyball to compete with them but I think we’re pretty confident we’re playing some good ball at the moment and we can take it to them,” Izac said.
Mariafe and Taliqua will be looking to continue their winning start to their Olympic medal defence when they meet USA’s Nuss/Kloth.
The two teams have played against each other five times in the last 12 months, with the USA recording a win on four occasions and the Aussies on one.
But that’s a result Mariafe Artacho del Solar said they’ll be looking to change.
“We can expect a battle - that’s for sure. We’ve played these girls a lot throughout the season and we always have a great battle.
“They’re a great team, they’ve got lots of big weapons but so have we. So it’s going to be a good game and I can’t wait,” she said.
