PARIS (AP) — Melissa Humana-Paredes has as her cellphone background a picture of herself, as a 3-year-old, holding a bronze medal from the Atlanta Olympics in 1996, when her father coached the Canadian beach volleyball team.
It had been, until this week, the only Olympic beach volleyball medal her country had ever won.
Humana-Paredes teamed with Brandie Wilkerson on Thursday to clinch no worse than silver at the Paris Games, rallying after losing the first set to beat Switzerland and earn a spot in the women’s beach volleyball final.
Watching from the stands at the Eiffel Tower Stadium was Humana-Paredes’ father, Hernán Humaña, who coached John Child and Mark Heese to third place in the sport’s inaugural appearance on the Olympic program. His daughter, who was born in 1992, said watching him travel the world for beach volleyball gave her the bug.
“It was something that I’ve been looking back to a lot, actually that’s guided my career,” Humana-Paredes told The Associated Press. “It gives me hope and it gives me inspiration of what’s possible. And he always taught me that anything is possible. I don’t think I would have been able to be here without his experience and his belief.”
The Canadians will play for gold against the top-ranked Brazilian pair of Ana Patrícia and Duda, who beat the Tokyo silver medalists from Australia on Thursday night. Brazil, which has won the most beach volleyball medals in Olympic history, avoided a second straight Olympic shutout.
We “heard a lot that Brazil didn’t get a medal in Tokyo,” Duda said through a translator. “And three years later, (we) are here with this medal. So it’s very important.”
On the men’s side, Germany also clinched no worse than silver, beating defending Olympic champion Norway in the men’s semifinals; Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler will play on Saturday against the jump-setting Swedes, a pair of 22-year-old first-time Olympians who are the top-ranked team in the world.
“If someone told us a few years ago that we would be in the final, I don’t think anyone would believe that,” Hellvig said after beating Tokyo bronze medalist Qatar in straight sets. “We have done an incredible journey the last few years. We’re super, super proud of that.”
The Canadian women had to win a lucky loser match just to make the knockout stage of the tournament and then faced a match point against the Swiss before winning the second set. It was the first set that the Swiss team of Tanja Hueberli and Nina Brunner had lost in Paris.
“There’s a lot of pride in what we’ve accomplished, what we’ve done over the last two weeks,” Humana-Paredes said after winning 14-21, 22-20, 15-12. “We’ve experienced the highest of highs and the lowest of lows.
“We still have one more day, one more game, and we’re not losing sight of that,” she said. “But it feels really great to secure a medal for Canada. We know the color that we want. But we have this together forever. And we hope Canada is proud of that.”
The Canadians trailed 20-19 in the second set before taking three points in a row to force a first-to-15, third set tiebreaker. They opened a 14-11 lead and, on match point No. 2, the Swiss hit it long and out.
Humana-Paredes chased after the ball, watched it land beyond the end line and kept on running in a giant circle back toward the net before coming back to Wilkerson, who belatedly dropped to her knees in apparent shock.
“That game alone, let alone the last two weeks of this tournament, it was a roller coaster,” Humana-Paredes said. “And so there’s a huge sense of relief. I was just running around because I was just full of energy that I needed to let out.”
Germany beat defending champions Anders Mol and Christian Sorum for the first time in their careers. Norway rallied after losing the first set to force a tiebreaker, but fell behind 14-12 in the third.
On the second match point, Mol appeared to deliver the block that would have tied it 14-all. But Germany used one of its challenges to request a review of whether he committed a net fault; the replay showed that the Norwegian did hit the bottom of the net with his legs when he jumped, and the match was over.
Germany will meet the top-ranked Sweden pair of David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig.
“First of all, we celebrate that we won the semifinal. And then we’re going to focus on the final match. And then we will see if it’s gold or silver,” Ehlers said. “I think both would be amazing for our federation, for our country. And we are so happy that we could make it happen.”
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