Andre and George continue Brazil gold rush at Saquarema Challenge
SAQUAREMA, Brazil — They’re still the kings, Andre Loyola and George Wanderley.
No, they may not have performed up to their lofty — especially when playing at home in Brazil — standards last weekend in Recife for the first Challenge of the season. A ninth was a puzzler, even if it included just a single loss in the tournament. And in reality, it was that ninth, their worst finish in Brazil since 2019, that made for a number of their opponents on the Beach Pro Tour point to George and Andre as favorites to win gold this past weekend in Saquarema.
You simply cannot hold down George and Andre in Brazil for long.
While the Beach Pro Tour is not scheduled to stop in Itapema this year, where Andre and George have won three straight, it doesn’t much matter. It is difficult to overstate the advantage that comes with playing at home when you’re a Brazilian team. In Recife, it was Evandro Goncalves and Arthur Mariano who took gold. It marked the second gold medal of their partnership.
There first came a year ago, in Saquarema.
“Special” is how Evandro described playing at home.
It is easy to see why.
Just as Evandro and Arthur did in Recife, George and Andre took the long route to the finals at the Saquarema Challenge. As Evandro and Arthur did in Recife, George and Andre lost their first match of pool, to Swiss qualifiers Marco Krattiger and Florian Breer, a stunner not necessarily in the simple matter of losing, but in how they lost. Krattiger and Breer walked all over the Brazilians 21-17, 21-12, stumping them with consistent side-out, frustrating them defensively.
They would be the last team to do so.
The remaining six matches became a tour de force for Andre and George. They knocked out Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner in pool (21-14, 21-19), made quick work of Tri Bourne and Chaim Schalk in the first round (21-13, 21-17), swept Vinicius Rezende and Heitor Barbosa (21-16, 21-18), then knocked out the final American team standing, Chase Budinger and Miles Evans (21-17, 21-13), to push back into the semifinals. France’s Julian Lyneel and Remi Bassereau, wild cards on a scintillating run of their own, offered some resistance, claiming the first set, 21-14, before falling in the next two, 18-21, 12-15. France would recover from its lone loss well, beating Austria’s Phillipp Waller and Martin Ermacora for bronze (21-15, 16-21, 15-12).
Only Cuba’s Jorge Alayo and Noslen Diaz, finalists in Recife as well, were left in the way of Andre and George. Like the Brazilians, they had marched all the way back from the lucky loser rounds. Like George and Andre, they seemed to have been awoken, not deflated, from their opening pool play loss, knocking out the Recife bronze medalists, Joaquin Bello and Javier Bello, and top-seeded Pedro and Guto.
Hot as they were, they weren’t hot enough.
Not in Brazil. Not against George and Andre.
The Brazilians won, 21-18, 17-21, 19-17, sealing their second gold medal of the Olympic qualification period, the other coming, of course, in Itapema, Brazil a year ago. It maintains Brazil’s perfect record in Challenges for male Brazilian teams in the last two years: Four Challenge events held — Itapema, Saquarema, Recife, Saquarema — four gold medals won by the home team.
“We knew it was going to be a tough match against the Cubans,” George said. “They were coming from another final in Recife and are a really good team. The fans were amazing and really pushed us to win. It was beautiful.”
Ludwig-Lippmann win crucial silver at Saquarema Challenge
The women, too, proved that playing at home is no small thing. Two of the four semifinalists — Talita Antunes and Taiana Lima, Vitoria de Souza and Hegeile Almeida — were Brazilians who came all the way from the qualifier. Both fell in their respective semifinals, to Germans Laura Ludwig and Louisa Lippmann and China’s Chen Xue and Xinyi Xia, but still: They provided plenty for the tremendous crowd in Saquarema to pack the stands.
Just as it went in Recife, however, when it was a Latvia-Canada final, it was a non-Brazilian final in Saquarema. Xue and Xia won a tremendous match over Ludwig and Lippmann (23-25, 24-22, 15-11), an enormous result for both but in particular the silver medalists, who are edging closer to punching their ticket to the Paris Olympic Games. Xue and Xia are already essentially a guarantee for Paris, while Ludwig and Lippmann jumped from No. 25 to No. 23 and still have another finish to add.
There is hardly a break on the Beach Pro Tour. One week of rest is all that will be had — many international teams will be enjoying that week of rest in Hermosa Beach and San Diego — before a four-week stretch of tournaments begins: a Challenge in Guadalajara and Elite16 in Tepic, Mexico; a Challenge in Xiamen, China, and an Elite16 in Brasilia, Brazil.
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