Menegatti / Orsi Toth in Sao Paulo final, Van Iersel / Meppelink take bronze

Sao Paulo, Brazil, September 28, 2014.  After impressive semifinal victories on Saturday, women’s teams from Brazil and Italy will meet for the gold medal on Sunday during the closing day of the double-gender US$ 800,000 FIVB Sao Paulo Grand Slam.

Teams with a contrast in style of play as well as experience will meet for gold as Italy’s young and talented 11th-seeded Marta Menegatti / Viktoria Orsi Toth will face off against Brazil’s veteran and super-talented 7th-seeded Larissa Franca / Talita Antunes as experience and the home-country support might just prove to be the difference in the outcome.  It will be the first meeting between the two teams.

This is the fourth final four appearance with no medals so far for the Italians in 16 events as a team.  Individually, Menegatti is playing her 68th FIVB World Tour event with four silver medals and 16 final four finishes to her credit.  Orsi Toth is playing her 28th tournament overall with three fourth place finishes and four final fours on the World Tour.  In 2010, the Italian duo won the silver medal at the FIVB U21 World Championship in Turkey.

Competing for the bronze medal on Saturday afternoon, Netherlands’ 9th-seeded Marleen van Iersel / Madelein Meppelink upended Brazil’s 13th-seeded sisters Maria Clara Salgado / Carolina Salgado by 2:0 (21-15, 21-14) in 33 minutes.  van Iersel / Meppelink were playing in their 11th tournament as a team and this was their third final four appearance and they now have two bronze medals. Individually, Meppelink was playing in her 62nd FIVB tournament with one gold medal and Van Iersel was playing her 97th event with four career wins.  They finish the tournament with a 6-2 tournament match record.

“I am feeling really excited, this is our last tournament of the season and I am really happy we closed it off with a medal,” stated Marleen van Iersel after the third place match.  “I think we can be very happy with this as a first year.  We have had our ups and downs, I think the highest point was winning the European Championship and we got two times bronze, so I think for the first year I am really happy and I am looking forward to continuing playing with Madelein.  We are two really good players, but it is always a question of whether you fit together as a team, but I think this year has shown that we really do fit together as a team and I am looking forward to the future.  I think we both have our own qualities and we find ways to help each other.  After we lost our semifinal, first I yelled really loud, then we went back to the hotel and I took a very long shower and let it all go, and then I decided that when I got out of the shower I was going to switch that button and be ready for the next game.”

“I am really happy.  This is our last tournament of the season and to close it off with a win and a medal makes me just really happy,” Madelein Meppelink joined in on the emotion.  “I think we can be really happy with the year.  We also became European champions, and had two bronze medals and one more semifinal.  We knew that when we started playing together we could be a good team, we had our ups and downs during the season, but to end it like this is great.  Next winter we start training hard again and it is a pre-Olympic season, so it is really important.  We are going to work our butts off to qualify for the Olympics.”

In Saturday’s first women’s semifinal Menegatti / Orsi Toth held off van Iersel / Meppelink in three sets by 2:1 (21-15, 18-21, 15-11) in 50 minutes.  They kept their torrid pace alive though it took three sets to overtake the opponents for just the second time as the Dutch won the first meeting between the two teams in three sets in April.  After pulling ahead quickly in the first set, the Italians fell behind in the second to even up the match for a tie-breaker set.  After a tight point-for-point early in the deciding set, Italy pulled away with several outstanding plays at the net and in serve reception to pull out the victory.

"At the end of the tie-breaker I was shaking, I was not feeling well, I had some bad and good sensations,” Viktoria Orsi Toth shares.  “It is a dream, it is my first time in a final, I am very happy and very emotional.  We have worked really hard this season, and sometimes we lost some important matches by just two points and now finally everything goes in the good way.  It is unexpected, but we worked really hard for this.”

“I feel very good, this is not my first final in the World Tour, but this is my first final with Viki, just one year and two months after we started playing together, so the satisfaction is...  I have no words!” Marta Menegatti adds.  “We worked a lot, we like each other on the court and outside the court and I think this is our strength, and we never give up.  I said to Viki to think ball by ball.  We just kept calm.  We lost at the beginning of the season against the Netherlands in the European Championship at home, so we took our opportunity to win against them.”

Click here for more info on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Sao Paulo Grand Slam.