Olympics-Beach volleyball-Brazil's Schmidt bows out of Games in surprise defeat
By Tetsushi Kajimoto
TOKYO, Aug 2 (Reuters) - Brazil's Rio gold medallist Bruno Schmidt and current partner Evandro Oliveira suffered a surprise loss against a Latvian pair in the men's beach volleyball round of 16 in Tokyo on Monday, ending his dream of winning a second consecutive gold.
Latvia's Martins Plavins, sporting tattoos on both arms, and partner Edgars Tocs played power volleyball under a light rain shower which helped cool the court temperature of 34°C (93.2°F).
The Latvians won 21-19 21-18 against in the 49-minute match. In the quarter-finals on Wednesday they will face another Brazilian pair when they meet Alison Cerutti -- London silver and Rio gold medallist with Schmidt -- and Alvaro Morais Filho.
Cerutti and Morais Filho beat Mexico's Josue Gaston Gaxiola Leyva and Jose Luis Rubio Camargo 21-14 21-13 on Monday.
Of the 42 points, Plavins scored 21 by attacks, while he went for non-scoring digs on 18 successful receives, exceeding the other players in the match.
"We knew how to play, and we knew what to do," Tocs told reporters. "Obviously not every time it happened, but today my partner played awesome and I did only jumping and scaring in the block. Plavins, he was digging and getting points."
"Here we work for practice and analyse opponents and that's it. We are preparing for it. We want to always win so it's not a surprise."
LACKLUSTRE PERFORMANCE
Highlighting the Brazilians' somewhat lacklustre performance under pressure by the Latvians, they committed 13 errors in all.
"I think Latvia was strong from the beginning today, they pushed like lots of pressing on our team," Schmidt said.
"Sometimes you lacked the atmosphere and the vibes with your partner... For sure, it was the hardest match we had this year... Unfortunately it was today, could have been another tournament, but it was today."
In the women's draw, U.S. pair April Ross -- the 2012 London silver and Rio 2016 bronze medallist -- and her partner Alix Klineman sailed through the last 16 with a 21-17 21-15 win over Cuba's Lidianny Echevarria Benitez and Leila Martinez Ortega.
Canada's Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Paredes also handily beat Spain's Liliana Fernandez Steiner and Elsa Baquerizo McMillan to make it to the quarter-finals.
Elsewhere in the men's round of 16, the Russia Olympic Committee's (ROC) Ilya Leshukov and Konstantin Semenov won against Chile's Marco Grimalt and his cousin Esteban.
Italy's Rio silver duo Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo narrowly defeated Poland's Michal Bryl and Grzegorz Fijalek 22-20 21-18 to make it to the quarters.
Also into the last eight were the ROC's Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy, who beat Spain's Pablo Herrera Allepuz and Adrian Gavira Collado.
Germany's Julius Thole and Clemens Wickler secured a come-from-behind victory against U.S. pair Jacob Gibb and Tri Bourne by 17-21 21-15 15-11 to reach the quarters. (Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Ken Ferris)
