Beach volleyball:

Hörl and Horst out in the Vienna intermediate round!

Julian Hörl (l.) and Alexander Horst(Bild: GEPA)

Julian Hörl and Alexander Horst were eliminated in the intermediate round of the Elite 16 beach volleyball tournament at Vienna's Heumarkt on Saturday. In the battle for a place in the quarter-finals, the red-white-red Olympic duo ultimately lost 2-0 (-15, -15) to the Americans Miles Partain/Andy Benesh. Hörl/Horst go into their immediate preparations for Paris in ninth place.

"It really hurts at the moment, they played sensationally well. They served the way they needed to," said Julian Hörl in the ORF TV interview. His partner Alexander Horst had a similar view. "Of course we're very disappointed. We tried a lot, but not much worked out. When they play like that, they're hard to beat."

"Then you have to take more risks"
The Austrians' far higher own error rate was decisive for the development of the match. "If they (the Americans; note) only make one mistake, you have to take more risks," explained expert Clemens Doppler.

Julian Hörl certainly wanted to archive the positives from the Vienna trip to Paris. "We experienced a lot of positive emotions and want to take the energy from the crowd with us. Now we need to train properly for another week and then play really cool Olympic Games," was his credo.