Olympics-Beach volleyball-Qatar's men pair wins bronze in Tokyo Games

Tokyo 2020 Olympics - Beach Volleyball - Men - Bronze medal match - Latvia (Plavins/Tocs) v Qatar (Cherif/Ahmed) - Shiokaze Park, Tokyo, Japan - August 7, 2021. Cherif Younousse of Qatar and Ahmed Tijan of Qatar celebrate winning bronze medal match against Latvia. REUTERS/John Sibley

TOKYO (Reuters) - Qatar's Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan won the bronze medal on Saturday in the men's beach volleyball in Tokyo, defeating Latvia's Martins Plavins and Edgars Tocs to get the country's first Olympic medal in the sport.

The match was smooth sailing for the Qatar duo, who delivered strong spikes by jumping high in the air while relentlessly blocking the opponents' spikes through the two sets. They won 21-12 21-18 against the Latvians.

Rap and hip-hop music with DJ's voices echoed through the empty arena without spectators except for delegations in the stand with a big national flag of Latvia.

Norway's Christian Sorum and Anders Mol will face Russian Olympic Committee's (ROC) Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy for the final scheduled for later on Saturday.

In women's beach volleyball, April Ross and Alix Klineman won https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/beach-volleyball-swiss-women-beat-latvia-duo-win-bronze-medal-2021-08-06 the first Olympic gold medal for the United States since 2012 on Friday, when they beat Australia's Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy.

The United States, the birthplace of beach volleyball, and Brazil have dominated the medals since the sport became an Olympic sport in 1996, winning nine of the 12 golds on offer coming into the 2020 Games.

(Reporting by Tetsushi Kajimoto; Editing by Himani Sarkar)

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