Ontiveros and Virgen double winners in Puerto Vallarta

PUERTO VALLARTA, Mexico, May 7, 2014 - Teams from Austria, Brazil, Chile, Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, Latvia, host country Mexico and the United States won both of their pool play matches with one remaining in the 32-team main draw at the double-gender US$150,000 FIVB Puerto Vallarta Open, the third event on the 2014 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar.

To the cheers of home country fans, Mexico’s Lombardo Ontiveros/Juan Virgen lead the undefeated teams after their twin wins Wednesday over teams from China and Norway. On Thursday, the Mexican duo will finish pool play with a match against 16th-seeded Sam Pedlow/Grant O’Gorman on the Playa Camarones stadium court.

The other 2-0 teams following Wednesday’s pool play are Latvia’s second-seeded Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Janis Smedins, Czech Republic’s third-seeded Robert Kufa/Jan Hadrava, Chile’s fourth-seeded Marco Grimalt/Esteban Grimalt, Austria’s ninth-seeded Tobias Winter/Finn Dittelbach, USA’s 11th-seeded John Hyden/Tri Bourne, Italy’s 14th-seeded Paolo Ingrosso/Matteo Ingrosso, Germany’s 21st-seeded qualifying team of Armin Dollinger/Christoph Dressler and Brazil’s 26th-seeded qualification team of Thiago Santos/Marcio Araujo.

Pleased to win two pool matches in their home country on Wednesday, Ontiveros said, “We have played very well. We have been playing together for a year and eight months as an official team, things have been doing great. We understand each other well and the results have started to improve since we began two years ago participating in some tournaments together for the Olympic qualification. I think we both made a good choice in becoming a team.”

Virgen is also pleased with the alliance, commenting, “The main goal is to qualify for the Rio Olympics in 2016. We have a lot of teams who have great talent, the teams are very competitive and it not getting easier. We are working very hard to give it a shot and Rio is a very real possibility if we keep working hard and keep improving every tournament.”