Tokyo – Qatar’s beach volleyball stars Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan, who are presently competing at the Tokyo Olympic Games, reached the World No. 1 spot in the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) ranking for the first time.
The new list released on Monday placed Younousse and Tijan right at the top with 5160 points. Last week’s top-ranked players, Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sorum, were pushed to second, with 4960 points.
The Qatari duo was ranked World No. 2 before their first match of the Olympic competition on Sunday.
Younousse and Ahmed have had a phenomenal run in the first half of 2021, where they entered five finals out of the seven four-star tournaments on the FIVB World Tour. They won one, the Cancun Hub tournament in May, and went down in hard-fought contests in the other four.
Reigning world champions Russians Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy are ranked third while USA’s Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb, and Czech Republic’s Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner are placed fourth and fifth respectively.
Source: Qatar Olympic Committee
