DOHA, Qatar — It wasn’t just a win that Adrian Carambula wanted for his new team, Anders Mol and Christian Sorum, this weekend at the Beach Pro Tour Finals in Doha, Qatar.
Norway has done plenty of that, thanks. In the past seven seasons, beginning with a scintillating run in 2018, Mol and Sorum have won 26 tournaments, good for second all-time, only eight behind Ricardo and Emanuel. They’ve won an Olympic gold, a World Championship and, now, four Beach Pro Tour Finals, mixed in with cowbells and steel and all manner of other trinkets and trophies.
Yet when you have won everything there is to win, when you have scorched the Earth and left it riddled with Viking flags, what is left?
Physically, nothing.
Psychologically? Everything.
A statement is what Carambula, the rookie coach and former Italian three-time Olympian, wanted from his team in Doha.
Consider that statement made.
Adrian Carambula celebrates with his new team/Volleyball World photo
Norway’s run at the top of the beach volleyball world has been as dominant as any the sport has seen, and in an era when the field is widely agreed to be as deep as it has ever been. During a three-year run from 2019-2022 (it is considered three years, as they didn’t play during the 2020 COVID-deleted season), Mol and Sorum won more than half of the tournaments they played. In fact, it reached such an absurd level of uninterrupted dominance that Mol and Sorum won more gold medals (12) than they lost single matches (11) in 2019 and 2021. The only tournament they did play in 2020? The European Championships, in which they didn’t drop a single set, exacting revenge on a 2019 World Championship loss to Russia’s Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy in the finals.
But how long could that realistically be sustained? How long could one take the best from every team in the world, in every match you play, 50-plus times per season? Slowly, the cracks — relatively speaking, for this is Norway we’re discussing here — began to show. Three times they forfeited out of tournaments in 2021. In 2023, for the first time in five years, another team, Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig, won more tournaments (4) than Norway (3), though Norway did make one more final. But it was telling still: After going 17-1 in gold medal matches from 2018-2022, the Vikings were appearing mortal, finishing 3-4 in those matches in 2023.
Room was made for Sweden to establish itself as the world’s new No. 1.
They did exactly that. Dating back to Ostrava of 2023, Sweden made 10 consecutive finals on the Beach Pro Tour, 12 when including back-to-back European Championship victories. It’s a run not even the mighty Vikings had made at their loftiest peak. The European Championship crown was passed off, as was the Olympics. The world No .1, too, was ceded.
There was a new top team in town.
Carambula wouldn’t have it.
Doha was his first event working with the team. And while Mol and Sorum would drop two matches in pool play, earning some friendly ribbing from Cherif Younousse, Carambula wasn’t concerned. He saw how the team was warming up — the intensity, the focus, the presence. The block-defense system he was installing was coming along.
It took four matches to settle in, for when it did, the statement Carambula wanted was made in bold.
Mol ascended to a new plane in a quarterfinal win over Germany’s Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler. Perhaps it was the Carambula Effect, or perhaps it was Mol’s own raging inferno at needing vengeance over the team that robbed them of an Olympic finals berth. Regardless of the why, the what was the same: Mol put on a performance that went beyond any the world had seen even of him. Every swing was a thunder clap, every block an exclamation point. Hustle plays were made, indefensible options taken. Germany, to their credit, played well.
But when Anders Mol ascends, there is little anyone can do about it.
There was nothing Ehlers and Wickler could have done.
Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan certainly couldn’t, either. Norway dusted their friends, 21-11, 21-16, in a semifinal match that Qatar never stood a chance. Mol and Sorum offered no room for breathing.
It was worth wondering, again, how sustainable it all was. The way Mol was playing was reminiscent of Tiger at the 2000 U.S. Open, where he won by a record 15 strokes, or Jordan in the 1986 NBA Playoffs, averaging 43.7 per game.
Mol belongs in that category of athlete where one name only is required.
And in the finals, he was every bit as Tiger- or Jordanesque, as Mol and Sorum swept the Swedes for the first time in a calendar year, 21-18, 22-20.
The win itself is nice, of course. Always is. Phil Dalhausser is famous for saying that “winning never gets old.” One of the rare men in the 100-win club, few know better.
But it was the manner in which Norway won, bullying their way through the playoffs over three teams with Olympic medals to their names, that was so astonishing.
There were no points awarded in Doha, although the prize money is certainly notable, with $150,000 to the winners. Mol and Sorum, then, will not jump Sweden and reclaim their spot atop the world rankings.
But in the minds of anybody watching the Finals this weekend? A statement was made.
Norway hasn’t gone anywhere.
