Never before has the world witnessed anything like what Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig did on Saturday evening in the finals of the Paris Olympic Games.
A win over Germany’s Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler? That could have been expected. Sweden had done so 10 consecutive times heading into the gold medal match of the Paris Olympics, and six times in 2024 alone.
But a 21-10, 21-13 pounding? The most lopsided win in an Olympic final in history? A margin wider than any of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings’ three golds? With Ehlers and Wickler peaking, on the heels of their first career victories over Anders Mol and Christian Sorum in Thursday’s semifinals?
It was, suffice it to say, a statement.
Yes, Sweden came into Paris as the No. 1 seed. Yes, they were the No. 1 ranked team in the world, and have been for months. Yes, they had made 10 straight finals prior to Paris, a run that dates back to more than a calendar year. But many in the beach volleyball world still couldn’t shake the notion that Mol and Sorum had been supplanted by the 22-year-old jump-setters who are actively revolutionizing the way the game is played.
Sweden hasn’t won a World Championship. They haven’t yet sustained what Mol and Sorum have for so long.
And yet, after Saturday, there is no other choice. There is no longer a debate.
Sweden is the greatest beach volleyball team in the world.
They are ushering in a new era of ball control and movement and setting that those within the game cannot help but adopt, or at the very least adapt in an attempt to halt or slow the Swedes.
What we witnessed on Saturday was a seminal moment in the sport.
There will be a Before Sweden and an After Sweden.
Currently, it is neither before nor after. It is, simply, Sweden’s time.
“They are the best team in the world,” Wickler told Volleyball World. “If you look at the last two years, how many times they won gold medals on the highest stage, and they were top-seeded in this Olympic Games, so I think any medal other than gold would have been disappointing for them. They are very, very strong.”
Once pool play concluded, and Sweden exorcised whatever nervy issues that led to two losses in three matches — as many as they had the entire season — there was no stopping them. Only Cuba’s Jorge Alayo and Noslen Diaz, who played tremendously in a deceivingly low ninth-place finish, took a set off Sweden once the playoffs began.
After Cuba?
Nobody even came within three points in a single set.
Not Evandro’s Evandro Goncalves and Arthur Mariano. Not Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan. Not Ehlers and Wickler.
Sweden played four straight opponents in the playoff rounds who hadn’t suffered a loss at that point in the tournament — and promptly dealt one devastating loss after the next. Their last six sets were won by an average of 21-14.3. Against the best teams the world has to offer when the world is at its deepest pool of talent it has ever seen.
Those are numbers one might expect of a Mol and Sorum, Olympic veterans who have been on this stage before, who have won on this stage before. And, to be sure, prior to Thursday’s semifinals — and then again in the bronze medal match — those were the numbers Mol and Sorum were hanging on teams. But on Saturday, it was the Olympic rookies, the 22-year-olds with a blindingly bright future who delivered such dominance, beating the team who beat the Norwegians.
It’s Sweden’s world now.
On Saturday, it was, to be specific, Hellvig’s world. The 6-foot-3 blocker finished with four blocks, three coming in a 21-10 first-set victory that set the tone for the second. When Sweden wins sets by such commanding margins, it is typically Ahman, the electrifying defender, who delivers the blows. But it was Hellvig, blocking Ehlers, blocking Wickler, optioning perfectly, tagging lines, finding space, funneling swings and shots into Ahman. It was Hellvig who met the moment when the moment demanded it. All Ahman had to do, really, was pick up the scraps that came his way.
“We focused before this game, and we knew that if we played well, we could win this match,” Ahman said. “And then we got to a really good start and after that everything just worked for us and I still don’t believe how we managed to play that well actually.”
For six years, Anders Mol and Christian Sorum have been on an unimpeachable run of their own. World Champs? Got it. World No. 1? For years and years. European Champs? Four straight at one point. And in Paris, they settled for bronze, bouncing back from a heartbreaking semifinal loss to Germany with a 21-13, 21-16 sweep over Cherif and Ahmed, who made their second consecutive Olympic semifinal.
Ahman and Hellvig collected Sweden’s first Olympic medal, while Mol and Sorum picked up Norway’s second. Ehlers and Wickler won Germany’s first in more than a decade, when Julius Brink and Jonas Reckermann won gold in London of 2012.
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