The American Crabb brothers have been battling each other since 2017, when they ended their partnership and joined other teammates, but when Taylor and Trevor were on opposite sides of the court in the A1 Major Vienna presented by Swatch Pool D’s opening match, there was a different kind of feeling in the air.
After all, even if they have already played for a gold medal in the American AVP, it was the first time the outcome of their match-up would directly influence both brothers’ dreams of qualifying to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Taylor was the one to leave the side court at the Danube Island smiling as him and Jake Gibb downed Trevor and Tri Bourne 21-19, 21-15 and secured a spot in the elimination round in Vienna. It was a big relief for the Americans, who lost all three pool matches in Tokyo last week to finish 19th at the Olympic test event.
“Trevor made a cool Instagram post kind of building the match up with our fans and it was pretty fun, but that’s about it for us, we just take it as any other match,” the 27-year-old Taylor, who won six of the eight matches reuniting the brothers, said.
“We’re really focusing on winning our pool here, so that’s a big one for us. Unfortunately we got out of the tournament in Japan pretty early, so we had a long time to rest and prepare and maybe that helped us.”
Currently, Trevor and Bourne sit in the eighth place of the Olympic rankings with 5,120 points while Taylor and Gibb are a far 29th with just 3,260 and three fewer tournaments played, also behind Americans Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena, who have 4,040.
That adds some weight to Taylor and Gibb’s victory, as they were the only of three Americans to win the opening matches in Hamburg and now have a good opportunity to cut their opponents’ advantages short this week.
“To be honest, we’re not really focusing on trying to beat out the other Americans right now,” Taylor added. “We’re trying to do the best we can. We know that if we get to put out good results we’ll beat out the other Americans, so we’re not really worried about head-to-heads or hoping they lose.”
