Brazilians occupied three of the top four spots in the men's 32-team single-elimination bracket after the completion of pool play at the 2007 Beach Volleyball World Championships here on Thursday.
Only Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers interfered with South Americans filling the top three spots as the Americans beat reigning world champions Marcio Araujo and Fabio Magalhaes for the third behind Pedro Cunha/Franco Neto and Emanuel Rego/Ricardo Santos.
Cunha and Franco assumed the top spot in the bracket after not losing a set in winning three round-robin matches the past three days, including a 21-18 and 21-13 victory Thursday over Jochem De Gruijter and Gijs Ronnes of the Netherlands.
Emanuel and Ricardo, the reigning Olympic champions, were also unbeaten in three pool matches, but their 21-14, 15-21 and 16-14 victory over Spain's Pablo Herrera and Raul Mesa dropped the Brazilians into the bottom half of the bracket with Dalhausser and Rogers.
Marcio Araujo and Fabio will compete in the top half bracket with Cunha and Franco.
Brazilians, seeking their fifth world title in six tries, even have a fourth team in the elimination bracket.
Harley Marques and Pedro Salgado advanced as they finished second in pool U after being upset by Germany's David Klemperer and Erick Koreng 21-19 and 21-19 in the group's deciding match.
Nine of the top 12-ranked tandems in the 48-team competition advanced into elimination stage after winning pools, including home duos Sascha Heyer/Patrick Huescher and the Laciga brothers (Martin and Paul). Both pairs won the final group match in straight sets to ovation in a packed centre court.
Joining Dalhausser and Rogers as American group winners were Mike Lambert and Stein Metzger, who beat Smoilovs Plavins of Latovia 21-17, 19-21 and 15-10 to top Group W.Julius Brink and Christoph Dieckmann joined Klemperer and Koreng as pool winners Thursday. Both German teams entered this week's 1,000,000-US-dollar championships after finishing second and fourth in Berlin two weeks ago.
Mischa Urbatzka and Jonas Reckermann also earned an elimination berth for Germany.
Other teams winning pools were Igor Kolodinsky/Dmitri Barsouk of Russia, Reinder Nummerdor/Richard Schuil of the Netherlands and Andrew Schacht/Josh Slack of Australia.
Nummerdor and Schuil, winners of their country's first-ever FIVB World Tour gold medal earlier this season in Bahrain, finished 3-0 in their pool while the Aussies and Russians were 2-1.
Jan Schnider and Marcel Gscheidle become the third Swiss tandem to gain an elimination bracket berth while the Americans gain two additional spots with the advancement by the teams of Jake Gibb/Sean Rosenthal and Matt Fuerbringer/Sean Scott.
In women's field, reigning Olympic and world champions Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh of the United States protected their No.1 seed for the 32-team elimination bracket by finishing pool play with 3-0 record and a 1.800 point ratio.
Juliana Felisberta Silva and Larrisa Franca maintained second seeds with 1.518 point ratio.
The Chinese teams of Tian Jia/Wang Jie and Xue Chen/Zhang Xi also advanced to the elimination rounds by winning their pools with 3-0 records.
Tian and Wang had a two-point difference in scoring margin to earn the third-seed in the elimination bracket over their Chinese rivals.
The two Chinese tandems are the top-ranked teams on the 2007 FIVB World Tour with Tian and Wang leading the way.
Source: Xinhua
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