Bulgaria and Russia clinched places at the Beijing Olympics when they defeated Argentina and the United States respectively in the men's World Cup volleyball tournament in Tokyo.

The Bulgarians rallied to a 25-17, 25-22, 25-23 victory for a 9-2 win-loss record and the Russians scored a 25-23, 20-25, 22-25, 25-17, 15-8 win as they joined world champions Brazil in Beijing.

It is only the seventh time that Bulgaria have qualified for the Olympics and the first since the 1996 Atlanta Games.

Their best finish was as the runners-up in the 1980 Moscow Olympics.

"This was an extremely important game, especially for me personally, because this is maybe the last chance to go to the Olympics. The Olympics are dreams for every athlete," said Nikolov Vladimir who scored 11 points.

"Now we are tired, very tired, we put maximum concentration, maximum motivation, and I'm very happy that we won."

Captain Plamen Konstantinov said: "This was the most important tournament for us this year, and maybe all the last four years, we were preparing for this year to reach the Olympic Games next year."

"So it's a big day for Bulgarian volleyball. We didn't qualify for the last two Olympic Games, so it was a very important goal," he added.

Bulgarian coach Martin Stoev said the biggest different from their performance at the European championships two months ago was the format of the tournament in which they were drawn in a stronger preliminary group.

Bulgaria eventually ended at a lowly eighth in Europe.

"This was not our best game, but the most important thing is the victory. Our players are getting tired and we had also small injuries," Stoev said.

Alexander Volkov was the hero of the match for Russia, hitting a couple of service winners at 17-17 in the fourth set to win consecutive points for 24-17, which turned the momentum.

"Our team really on our serve very much and whenever it doesn't work, we lose a game like the matches against Brazil and Bulgaria. Today, it worked pretty well, although it was a bit risky," said Russian coach Vladimir Alekno.

"I can not explain logically what happened in today's match, maybe we were a bit lucky, but in any sports events, you can not say until the very end of a match. We learned a lot from today's match," he added.

Meanwhile, the best scorer Semen Poltavskiy said: "I don't have many things to talk about this match. I can only say that the most important thing was we won the ticket to the Olympics."

It will be Russia's fourth straight appearance in the Olympics since the former Soviet Union collapsed in the early 1990s. They won the silver medal at the 2000 Sydney Games and the gold three times as the Soviet Union.

AFP