The medal table of the Roundnet World Championship is short, and until Thursday evening it had six names on it: the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Canada and France. In the space of an hour at Parc du Tremblay it gained two more.
First Ernestsone and Juska won bronze for the Netherlands. Then Dudine and Rossetto beat the top seeds Dolan and Fowler of the United States, 21-17, 24-25, 21-12, and Italy's first medal at a world championship turned out to be a world title.
They are mixed world champions, and they did it on day one of four.
Both pairs arrived without dropping a match. Dolan and Fowler, seeded first, beat Lawton and Moffitt 17-10, 17-8, then came through three games against the German pair Schirop and Senger, 17-12, 12-17, 17-14, and beat Ernestsone and Juska in the semi-final 21-13, 18-21, 21-16. Dudine and Rossetto, seeded second, took 17-4 and 17-4 off Matus and Lochowski, beat Anderle and Teskey 17-14, 19-17, and came from a game down against Morehouse and Wideman, 15-21, 21-10, 21-14.
The final followed the same pattern as almost everything in this division. Italy took the first game 21-17. The United States answered 25-24, on the hard cap, the second time on Thursday that a game at this championship was settled by a single point at 24-24. Then Italy won the decider 21-12, which was the least close game of the three.
The Netherlands got there first
An hour before the final, Ernestsone and Juska beat Morehouse and Wideman 18-16 and 17-15 to take bronze, and that result rewrote a list that had not changed in three editions.
The medal count the federation published before this championship names six nations and no others: the United States, Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Canada and France. The Netherlands is the seventh country ever to win a medal at a Roundnet World Championship.
Lauma Ernestsone and Aleksandrs Juska are both Latvian by birth. Juska is in the FRESH Hall of Fame, inducted at FRESH 26 alongside Paul Volle.
Almost five hundred people watched it, on a Thursday
Close to 500 people were watching the mixed final live on YouTube while it happened, on a Thursday evening in early September, for a sport with no television deal and no broadcast budget. Two of the eight nations on the all-time medal table got there in the hour those people were watching.
What is still to come
This was day one of four. Mixed ran a full round ahead of the other two divisions all day, which is why it produced the first champion of the championship. The men's and women's individual semi-finals are on Friday at 14:00, the men's final at 16:30 and the women's at 18:00. The squad competition starts on Friday morning and its finals are on Sunday.
The full day, including all twelve quarter-finals and the numbers behind them, is in 987 games, 27,016 points, gold for Italy and bronze for the Netherlands.
FRESH 27 is in Palma, Mallorca in March 2027. If you want to be told when places open, put your name on the list at FRESH.
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