Alayo and Díaz will clash in the semifinals with the Argentine brothers Nicolás and Tomás Capogrosso, after eliminating the pairs from Poland (Piotr Kantor-Jakub Zdybek) and Canada (Samuel Schachter-Daniel Dearing) the day before in the quarterfinals and round of 16, respectively, in both cases by shutouts of 2-0 sets.
The fact of placing among the best four duos in the competition assured the Caribbean of their ticket to the Paris 2024 Games, by adding 680 units to the provisional Olympic ranking and raising their accumulated score to 7,740 points, thus surpassing the from Austria (Julian Horl/Alexander Horst) and Chile (Marcos and Esteban Grimalt), both with 7,240.
Trained by coach Francisco Álvarez Cutiño, the Cubans record a victory against their rivals this Sunday, exactly in the round of 16 of the Challenge in Recife, Brazil, a competition in which Alayo and Díaz won the silver medals.
The performance of the Argentine duo is also notable in Polish arenas, as they first had to seek qualification for the main draw of 24 teams in a preliminary phase among 32 other pairings.
Once placed in group B of the main draw, the gauchos came second by beating the experienced Italians Alex Ranghieri-Adrián Carambula 2-1 (10-21, 22-20, 15-10), a couple that already has its Olympic ticket, and lose to the Dutch Stefan Boermans-Yorick de Groot by 0-2 (18-21, 14-21).
They then secured their presence in the semifinals after defeating the Brazilians Vitor Felipe-Renato Lima 2-0 (21-19, 21-19) and the Australians Thomas Hodges-Zachery Schubert 2-0 (21-19, 21-15 ), in the quarterfinals and round of 16, respectively.
The other semifinal will feature the aforementioned Dutch Boermans-de Groot and the world champions in Tlaxcala 2023, the Czechs Ondrej Perusic-David Schweiner, who beat another duo from the Netherlands in the quarterfinals, Alexander Brouwer-Robert Meeuwsen by 2-1 ( 25-23, 20-22, 15-9).
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