ADELAIDE, Australia – On a post-card Sunday morning, sunny and 80 and lovely as a summer sea, the type of weather Adelaide locals had promised for the nine previous days was the norm this time of year, Razzie Johnson and Anders Kristiansson looked like men on vacation.
Unbelievably, they sort of were.
A season that had begun in March in Mexico and slowly built to its mighty climax, had culminated to this most unlikely point: the 2025 Beach Volleyball World Championships finals featuring not one but two Swedish teams.
It would not have been wrong for Johnson and Kristiansson, coaches and architects of the budding Swedish beach volleyball dynasty, to expect one of their two spectacular teams – David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig, Jacob Holting-Nilsson and Elmer Andersson – to be competing for the gold medal.
But both?
That would have been preposterous. Outlandish enough odds that, when asked about the probability of such an event happening, Kristiansson told Swedish reporters that there was a zero percent chance.
Now they were looking at what a zero-percenter felt like.
At 7 p.m. that night, the two men would sit not in their customary coaching chairs – Johnson with Ahman and Hellvig, Kristiansson with Holting-Nilsson and Andersson – but in the VIP section, directly on the baseline. That, in fact, had been their greatest source of stress on Sunday: Where would they sit to watch the finals?
Their coaching accreditations were comically limited, to the point that they had actually been kicked out one evening earlier in the week. But they wouldn’t risk marring the perfect chemistry their tight-knit federation has sown by coaching against one another, so they forfeit their chairs and hoped for the best.
That night, leaned all the way forward in their loungers, rapt with attention, they had the best seats in the house for the best match of the week.
Razzie Johnson and Anders Kristiansson/Volleyball World photo
There is no rivalry like that of brothers, and while Ahman and Hellvig, and Holting-Nilsson and Andersson, share no blood relation, they are looked at as sibling teams in the beach volleyball world.
This was rivalry enough.
While Ahman and Hellvig had won two out of the three previous meetings between the two quite decisively, Andersson and Holting-Nilsson bore little resemblance of the team they played in mid-August in Montreal. They knew this, of course: They trained against one another daily. No team had witnessed the rapid rise of Andersson and Holting-Nilsson as Ahman and Hellvig had.
The match delivered on its considerable hype, a 25-23, 21-19 slugfest that saw the rally of the tournament at 20-19 in the first set. For 30-plus seconds, neither team allowed the other to score, Andersson and Ahman going dig for unbelievable dig before the younger Sweden alas put the final swing down, extending the set, much to the delight of the 6,500 in attendance.
It was, as expected, Ahman and Hellvig, the 2024 Olympic gold medalists who prevailed, but it was Andersson and Holting-Nilsson who turned heads. Such performances are the expectation at this point for Ahman and Hellvig, a pair who once made 11 consecutive finals and have now won every major tournament there is to win in this sport. But questions over whether Andersson and Holting-Nilsson had arrived at that level yet were fair to ask. It was only a few months ago that they were taking 17ths in Challenge events and needed a parade of withdrawals just to get into the Gstaad Elite qualifier.
It was fair to ask those questions.
Now it is fair to declare them definitively answered.
Holting-Nilsson’s performance in the first set was flawless, siding out 100 percent, most of those attacks coming on two. His jump-set decision making was excellent, his blocking problematic for Ahman and Hellvig, finishing with three blocks in the opener.
While sharing a court with two Olympic gold medalists, he was the best player on it.
Andersson, meanwhile, displayed the full height of his growth. Once a defender who relied on his offensive prowess to bail him out of not making an abundance of digs, he came into that match just one dig shy of Ahman, the 2024 MVP and Best Defensive Player.
It all calls to mind a memorable and amusing conversation at breakfast at the Montreal Elite, when another team, seeing the rapid rise of Holting-Nilsson and Andersson, sighed in resignation.
“Another f***** Sweden,” they sighed.
So while Sweden can enjoy their 1-2 finish at the World Championships, something only Brazil has ever done before, in 2011 in Rome, the rest of the world will now play catch-up.
“Sweden,” Ahman said after his semifinal win over Germany’s Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler, “isn’t exactly known for beach volleyball.”
That has certainly changed.
France, Europe add to history-making week
History was abound all week in Adelaide, but particularly Sunday. Before Sweden made its own history in winning its first World Championship, and claiming two out of its three total medals in federation history in a single day, the continent of Europe added a little history of its own: 2025 marked the first all-European semifinal.
A sport that has so long been dominated by Brazil and the United States has no doubt shifted its geographical headquarters.
Not that 2025 was drastically different than 2023 in Mexico. In Tlaxcala, it was an all-European podium, with Poland’s Bartosz Losiak and Michal Bryl whipping Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner for bronze, while Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner out-dueled Ahman and Hellvig for gold.
It being an all-Euro semifinal was of little surprise, given the relative strength of Europe and the decline of the USA and Brazil. Sweden knocked out the final non-European contenders in the quarterfinals: Holting-Nilsson and Anderson swept Chaim Schalk and James Shaw, and Ahman and Hellvig did the same to Evandro and Arthur.
It paved the way for Teo Rotar and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat to make France’s first World Champs podium, claiming bronze in a sweep over Ehlers and Wickler that was shocking in its ease, a 21-15, 21-15 drubbing that looked as cool and calm as a Sunday stroll.
Even before the bronze, it was already an historic event for France: They’d never made a single semifinal.
Now they have a piece of hardware to show for it.
For Ehlers and Wickler, as the defender wrote on Instagram, fourth is the finish nobody really wants – although it is still their best finish of the season, and best of their partnership in a World Champs. After a season as trying as theirs, without a single Elite podium to show for it, ending fourth in the world is no small thing.
Wickler could have become only the second German man to ever make multiple podiums in a World Champs, joining Julius Brink. He’ll have to wait until 2027 in The Hague for another crack.
Jonatan Hellvig and Jacob Holting-Nilsson in unicorn on unicorn warfare/Volleyball World photo
We have entered Beach Volleyball’s Unicorn Era
All week on the broadcast, I mentioned the proliferation of young and large – but not impossibly huge – blockers who had a tremendous blend of size, mobility, explosive vertical abilities and the dexterous coordination, not to mention mental acuity, to jump-set.
These are the unicorns, and they are everywhere.
The three blockers on the podium – 24-year-old Jonatan Hellvig, 20-year-old Jacob Holting-Nilsson, 21-year-old Teo Rotar – all constitute as unicorns. James Shaw fits the bill, as does Latvia’s Kristians Fokerots, a 20-year-old who has a European Championship gold medal already and finished 17th with Martins Plavins. Germany’s Lukas Pfretzschner, who split-blocks with Sven Winter and took fifth, would qualify as a unicorn, and I’d also throw Remi Bassereau and Timo Hammarberg on the list. Cuba’s Noslen Diaz deserves his own category.
While Anders Mol remains the undisputed king of blockers, he will now have that title challenged on an annual basis.
Australia Has a Bright Future Ahead
In the relatively brief period I played internationally, whenever I saw an Australian team, I must confess that I looked at them as a dream draw.
That is no longer the case.
For as long as most of the current crop of players has been playing, Australia has been mostly a footnote. Damien Schumann and Chris McHugh were solid, and McHugh and Paul Burnett after them. Zach Schubert and Thomas Hodges bludgeoned their way into the Paris Olympic Games via points, becoming the first Aussie men’s team to do so since 2008, and Mark Nicolaidis and Izach Carracher joined them via the Continental Cup.
Now they have a crop of men built like middle linebackers and free safeties who are at once skilled and as physical as any team on the Beach Pro Tour. On paper, Chaim Schalk and James Shaw’s first round loss to 40th-seeded Jack Pearse and D’Artagnan Potts looks rough.
In person, it did not.
Pearse and Potts are wildly gifted athletes, big jumpers who can hit angles few outside of Qatar and Cuba can. They nearly upended Ruben Penninga and Matthew Immers for a second pool play win, but were felled by a rash of errors and lack of offensive options that plagues most Aussie teams. Ben Hood and Oliver Merritt are built much the same, as is Luke Ryan, the 21-year-old who blocked for Schubert in his retirement event.
Every name mentioned gets their chest clear above the net. Their physical capabilities are of no question. But what happens when hard angle is no longer available, or working?
That’s where there needs to be improvement.
If they are to become as skilled, or nearly so, at volleyball, and the finer nuances of the decision-making of it, as Carracher and Nicolaidis are, Australia has a legitimate chance to be one of the deeper federations on Tour.
Noslen Diaz: The Victor Wembanyama of Beach Volleyball
Like Victor Wembanyama of the San Antonio Spurs, it is hard to think of a precedent for a player quite like Noslen Diaz, a 6-foot-9 defender who is long and lithe as any blocker, yet as smooth and coordinated with the deft touch of a player much smaller.
When he touches the ball, it is virtually game over. When he and Jorge Alayo are both on and passing well, it is difficult to recall a more formidable offensive team than these two. Like the Aussies mentioned above, when they fully master the ball control and touch side of the game, they will be consistently making finals.
However, that time has not yet come.
Their inconsistencies, coupled with an outstanding match from James Shaw and Chaim Schalk, led Cuba to a ninth, finishing a season with two medals in eight events. By any measure, that’s a solid season. But if Cuba can steady out? That’s the minimum to expect from them.
Bartosz Losiak and Michal Bryl were the most recent victims of pool play/Volleyball World
World Champs Becomes Another Referendum on Pool Play
For the third straight major tournament — 2023 World Championships, 2024 Olympic Games, 2025 World Championships — we have a two-loss champion.
Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner lost twice in pool play in Tlaxcala and won a gold medal. Twice in a row, at the Paris Olympic Games and 2025 World Championships, David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig have lost twice in pool and won.
If that does not make the case for the meaninglessness of pool play, I’m not sure what could.
A format with no consequences to losing, and minimal benefits to winning, is not a good format.
Compare, for example, the road of Pool E winner Bartosz Losiak and Michal Bryl, and the team they beat to win pool, Sven Winter and Lukas Pfretzschner.
Poland draws the eventual winners in two-loss Sweden. Germany gets Mark Nicolaidis and Izach Carracher — not a bad team… but not Sweden. They then get No. 23 seed Hendrik Mol and Mathias Berntsen and No. 18 Teo Rotar and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat.
Any format in which it is plausible to say “It would have been better to lose” is not a good format.
Listeners/readers/viewers of SANDCAST, I’m sure, are tired of me constantly pointing out the waste of time that is pool play, but what we should be tired of is a format that wastes the athletes’ energy and everyone else’s time.
