U.S. Olympians Taryn Brasher (née Kloth) and Kristen Nuss earned their second consecutive World Beach Volleyball Championships medal, taking silver in Adelaide, Australia.
Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoilova won Sunday’s final 21-15, 15-21, 15-11 for Latvia’s first beach worlds medal.
Brasher and Nuss lost just two sets in seven matches en route to the final. The Americans rallied from one-set deficits to win matches in the round of 16 and in the semifinals.
Brasher and Nuss were upset in the round of 16 in their Olympic debut in Paris, one year after taking bronze in their first World Championships.
This season, they led the Pro Beach Tour by winning three of the 11 top-level tournaments going into worlds. Brasher and Nuss had won their last five matches against the Latvians, according to BVBInfo.com.
“We constantly lost to them all the times that we had played,” Graudina said, according to the International Volleyball Federation. “But today everything happened as we wanted.”
Graudina and Samoilova lost in the bronze-medal match at the Tokyo Olympics, then were defeated in the quarterfinals of the Paris Games by eventual gold medalists Ana Patricia and Duda of Brazil.
In Adelaide, Ana Patricia and Duda withdrew before their scheduled round of 16 match, citing medical reasons.
The U.S. won the last world title in 2023 with Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes. Cheng and Hughes now play with different partners.
In the men’s tournament in Adelaide, Olympic gold medalists David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig rebounded from two losses in group play to win all 10 sets in the knockout rounds. They won an all-Sweden final over Elmer Andersson and Jacob Nilsson 25-23, 21-19.
