Rotar and Gauthier-Rat earn France’s first-ever World Championship medal

They defeated German Olympic medalists Ehlers and Wickler to finish third in Adelaide.

Téo Rotar and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat made history on Sunday at the 2025 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship, winning France’s first-ever medal in the tournament.

The Frenchmen faced German Olympic medalists Nils Ehlers and Clemens Wickler in the first match of the last day of action in Adelaide and secured the historic result by taking them down 2-0 (21-15, 21-15) to finish third and earn a spot on the podium in Australia.

Later on Sunday, the last match of the men’s tournament in Adelaide will see David Åhman/Jonatan Hellvig and Jacob Hölting Nilsson/Elmer Andersson going at each other in the all-Swedish gold medal match for the world title at 19:00 local time (8:30 UTC).

Present at the World Championship since the inaugural edition in 1997, France had to wait almost three decades for its first medal, which came one year after the vastly successful Paris Olympics, where the country had two teams in each gender competing at the Games for the first time.

The most experienced of the two, the 29-year-old Gauthier-Rat made just his third appearance at the World Championship this week in Australia. A longtime member of the French national team program, he celebrated another success achieved by the country on the sand.

“This medal is the result of many years of work,” he reflected. “We’ve been working on the national team program for about 15 years now. The main goal was to qualify two teams for the Paris Olympics last year, which we did, but every day we try to write a new chapter in that story. I want to thank everyone who has been involved in the program since the start, because they all have a part in it.”

Rotar, 21, joined Gauthier-Rat this season and is taking a historic medal home from his first World Championship appearance.

“It’s crazy, I still can’t believe it,” he reacted. “We faced the top teams in the world here this week and couldn’t have done it without the support of the fans on the stand and back home in France and the incredible work of our entire team.”

The World Championship podium appearance adds to what has been a solid first season for the team formed after last year’s Paris Olympics, which won medals at both the Alanya (silver) and the Xiamen (bronze) Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Challenge events and traveled to Adelaide after getting three-straight top-ten finishes in Elite tournaments.

In Australia, Rotar and Gauthier-Rat made it to the podium with a campaign of seven wins and only one loss, to Hölting Nilsson and Andersson, in Saturday’s semifinals.