“Bring on the big guns” is Clemens Doppler’s message after the Austrian and partner Alex Horst booked their place in the elimination phase as runners-up in Pool C.
The silver medalists of 2017 lost to Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy, which meant it was the Russians that topped the pool to, in theory, ensured themselves a better draw.
However, veteran Doppler, who is playing in a record 10th world championships, knows more than more most that come this stage of a major tournament you take nothing for granted.
And having won the previous two matches, the 38-year-old could afford to be philosophical – and acknowledged there are plenty of top teams that would want to swap positions with them.
“I think most teams’ goal is to advance from the group and we’ve done that,” said the blocker. “You could be the group with Dalhausser and Brouwer and be in a situation that you could be going home.
“We have achieved our first goal and I now hope we face a strong team in the knockout round. We play better against the good teams, we raise our game. We could afford to play a bit easier today as we had won our two previous games and our performance in the first set was very, very good.”
The result meant the Austrians mirrored their results in Vienna two years ago – winning the first two and losing the final pool play match.
And Doppler hopes history will repeat itself at the Red Bull Beach Arena.
“It’s the same rhythm as in Vienna and we went all the he final although that wasn’t the plan,” he added. “We knew coming into the tournament we had a good chance of getting through the pool and we’ve done that running one of the favorites really close.”
In the other match in Pool C, Italians Alex Ranghieri and Marco Caminati booked themselves a spot in the lucky loser round with a straight sets win over Japan’s Yuya Ageba and Yusuke Ishijima, who are eliminated after losing all three matches.
