Four months since winning silver at Gold Coast 2018, Mariafe Artacho and Taliqua Clancy have concluded their first full-season together by claiming bronze at the Volleyball FIVB World Tour Finals in Hamburg, Germany.
Seeded seventh in the event, Artacho and Clancy posted a 2-1 (21-15, 19-21, 15-8) bronze medal win in 51 minutes over fourth-seeded Brazilians Maria Antonelli/Carolina Salgado to advance to their sixth FIVB World Tour podium this season in 12 events.
“I’m so proud of what we’ve done and achieved,” said Clancy.
“We set out some goals of what we wanted to achieve this year and I think we’ve actually reached all of them. I think we’ve put ourselves in a good position to start the Olympic qualification. We definitely want to be the best even though we’re in our first season, we want to be consistent and take them momentum all the way to Tokyo.”
Their 2017-2018 FIVB campaign has been special, Artacho and Clancy captured four World Tour gold medals by reaching the top of the podium at events in China (Qinzhou) Australia (Sydney), Switzerland (Lucerne) and Portugal (Espinho) to record the most-ever titles in a season by an Australian men’s or women’s team.
As for season totals, Artacho and Clancy earned $133,500 for the third-best winnings effort by a women’s Australian team as the pair won 41 of 53 matches together (77.4 winning percentage).
“We’re a fresh team and I think we’ve done really good in our first season as a team and it’s kind of a place of where we can keep going and where we can take our team,” said the 24-year old Artacho.
“We’re really competitive and keep working hard and keep setting new goals. We can keep growing and take the team to another level.”