The two players are separated by almost ten years of life experience and twenty centimeters in height - and yet Cinja Tillmann and Svenja Müller harmonize extremely well with each other.
At the World Championships in Rome, the unequal beach volleyball duo from Hamburg reached the knockout round without defeat, which begins this Wednesday.
"We're happy that we're first in the group," said the 30-year-old team leader Tillmann after the end of the preliminary round, which means that they now meet the Finns Taru Lahti and Niina Ahtiainen in the first final round (12 p.m. in the live stream on sportdeutschland.tv): “We're excited about every game we can play;
We're glad it's not over for us."
Achim Dreis
sports editor.
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The addendum can safely be seen as an understatement – even if the Italians benefited from bad luck with injuries in the win against Reka and Viktoria Orsi Toth.
Because Müller/Tillmann had already attracted attention before the World Championships - at the latest when they had won the elite tournament on the new Pro Tour in Ostrava.
"Totally surprising" and "suddenly world class" were the headlines afterwards - and a look at the world rankings revealed a completely new picture for the two of them: there are the defense specialist Tillmann, who is only 1.71 meters tall, and her companion, who is a head taller, with the status of Lead to third place on Monday.
All German teams in the knockout stages
The unexpectedly high world ranking is also due to the fact that many teams were formed at the beginning of the Olympic cycle before the 2024 Summer Games, some are not yet settled in, others have only completed a small number of tournaments.
Nevertheless, the good place in the ranking is a clear signal in the direction of Paris - also to the internal German competition.
But after the three pool games to warm up in Rome, they are also in a good position so far: In addition to Müller/Tillmann, all other German teams also qualified for the knockout phase.
The experienced Karla Borger and Julia Sude, winners of the 2021 World Tour final, made it through to the round of the top 32 with three wins without losing a set and will meet the Americans Flint there at 11 a.m. (on sportdeutschland.tv in the live stream). /cheng
Sandra Ittlinger and Isabel Schneider won two games and progressed as runners-up in the group. They are now playing on Center Court (3 p.m. livestream) against the strong Australians Clancy/Mariafe.
And the duo Chantal Laboureur/Sarah Schulz managed to make the leap after just one win in the preliminary round as one of the best third-placed teams, but now have the toughest opponents imaginable in the Brazilians Talita/Rebecca (5 p.m. in the live stream) in front of them.
Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler are the only German representatives to move on as group winners in the men's group and play against Poland's Kantor/Rudol in the first final round (12 p.m. on the live stream).
The former European Championship runner-up Cinja Tillmann has been training with Svenja Müller at the federal base in Hamburg since last year.
The choice of location came as quite a surprise, since Tillmann, who comes from the Münsterland region, and her previous partner Kim Behrens had previously fought a tough court battle against the German Volleyball Association (DVV).
Behrens/Tillmann felt they were being treated unfairly by the association when it came to nominations for the World Tour.
It speaks for Tillmann's resilience that she is now training at the DVV headquarters after the negative judgment in the last instance.
But the new start with Svenja Müller, who moved to Hamburg from Dortmund after graduating from high school, shows initial success under the new national coach Kirk Pitman from New Zealand.
The only 21-year-old Müller expanded her attacking repertoire to five variants, which makes the team more difficult to calculate.
Despite its size deficit, Tillmann is now acting more energetically on the network.
And both players impress with good athleticism and mental strength.
After losing the first set in the first game against the outsiders Worapeerachayakorn/Naraphornrapat from Thailand, they improved continuously in the course of the World Cup until they won 2-0 in the group final against the Brazilians Taiana Lima/Hegeile.
It should not have been the last prank.