Tom Englén and Fredrik Petersson made it to the quarter-finals of the European Championship in 1997 and Björn Berg and Simon Dahl repeated that feat in 2004, but never before has a Swedish beach volleyball pair reached an European Championship semi-final - until now.
And the way David Åhman and Jonatan Hellvig did it in a rainy Munich is impressive.
The Swedish pair grabbed a few-ball lead early in the first set and led by as many as five points when Pablo Herrera and Adrián Gavira found their flow and picked up four straight points from 12–7 to 12–11.
But the Spaniards never came closer than that and Hellvig/Åhman were finally able to win the set with a fairly comfortable 21–16.
The second set was much more even, the teams trailing each other up to 31–31 before Spain was able to win two straight points, after saving six Swedish match points, and take the quarterfinals to a tiebreaker.
In that situation, it felt like the Spaniards had the momentum, but the Swedish 20-year-olds showed mental strength and were never really out of sorts in the third set, which they were able to eventually take home with 15–11.
The text is updated.