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Sun, Sand And Success In London

Great Britain’s Beach Volleyball duo Lucy Boulton and Denise Johns produced a series of fantastic performances on their way to a top 4 finish in the London 2012 Beach Volleyball Test Event.

The tournament took place over 6 days at Horse Guards Parade and featured 24 pairings from 15 different countries. Lucy and Denise entered the competition ranked ninth and quickly progressed through the group stages. In their first knockout match they met the current Canadian Champions. Lucy and Denise battled hard in the match to beat their competitors in two overtime sets, 26-24, 22-20.

After beating the competitions 5th ranked pairing, Lucy and Denise drew the current World number one partnership in their quarterfinal match. The girls needed to record a career-best victory in order to reach the semi-finals. Rising to the challenge, and with the support of the home crowd, Lucy and Denise pulled off the upset of the tournament. They defeated the formidable Chinese duo, who were bronze medallists at the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, in just 39 minutes and in two sets; 21-19, 21-19.

The Girls were delighted with their performance:

"It's pretty surreal, "Denise said. "We came in not expecting to do much. We were going to put our game out there, but we weren't expected to win. We were just able to play freely without any pressure. They were the ones who were expected to win."

"We've played other top five, top ten teams before and always lost, but we played well and like Denise said the pressure was off us and on them," Boulton said. "We can compete with those teams, but to win and especially in two sets I'd say that was the best of the career so far."

Lucy and Denise were drawn against the World no 5 partnership in the semi-finals. The USA pairing were hotly tipped to win the tournament having not lost a set in the whole tournament. The Americans took the first set 21-13 but Lucy and Denise came out strongly in the second taking the set 21-17 (a feat no other team had managed.) The third set was a close fought battle but despite their best efforts the more experienced American partnership took the final set 15-10.

In the playoff match for the bronze medal, the GB girls faced one of the internationally renowned Brazilian Beach Volleyball pairings. Lucy and Denise battled hard matching the Brazilians point for point in both sets, but were unable to defeat the world number 22 partnership who took the match 21-19, 21-18.

Lucy and Denise were understandably disappointed in not getting a medal, but were extremely pleased with their tournament as a whole and are now looking forward to the rest of the season:

'We feel disappointed with the loss today, but looking across the whole week there's been loads of positives and some real career highs. "

'We've got two more events on the World Tour in the next couple of weeks so momentum is really important, we've definitely been building and building and in terms of performance we've been getting better and better. This week we've shown how the hard work we've done is paying off."

'We just need to carry that on for the next couple of weeks and make it count on the World Tour."

Congratulations from everyone at MTC!

 

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