Marseille, FRANCE, July 19, 2008 -- Teams from Brazil and China won their semifinal matches in the US$350,000 World Series13 here on Saturday.

a spirited match against their fellow countrymen that was vital to their bid for playing in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. The top-seeded Chinese team, Wu Penggen and Xu Linyin, won their semifinal match which will enable them to attempt to collect the first gold medal in the country's history.

Marcio Araujo and Fabio Luiz Magalhaes entered the tournament with a slim lead in the Olympic qualification standings over Harley Marques and Pedro Salgado, seeded second in Marseille. The two teams met Friday afternoon, with Harley and Salgado winning 21-14, 21-12. But after Marcio Araujo and Fabio recovered to win three straight matches, all which lasted three sets, a rematch was slated in the semifinals.

The victory will likely send Marcio Araujo to his second straight Olympics and Fabio to his first. Harley and Salgado had won all three meetings between the teams this season prior to today. The sweep ended a streak of 12 straight men's matches in Marseille that had lasted three sets.

Wu and Xu played a semifinal match against the surprise "final four" team of Stefan Uhmann and Kay Matysik of Germany. Wu and Xu used some big runs to catapult them to the fifth gold medal match in Chinese men's history. Down 13-10 in the first set, the Chinese went on a 5-0 run en route to winning 22-20. In the second set, the Olympic-bound team had three match points, but was unable to put away the determined Germans, who won 27-25. However in the third set, China went on an 8-0 run early to leave little doubt, winning 15-6.

Wu and Xu, the first team from China to win a medal on the SWATCH FIVB World Tour, now will try to become the first team to win a gold medal. Prior to this season the tandem was 0-3 in semifinal matches, following today's victory they have won all five semifinal matches this season. The duo is 0-4 in gold medal matches however.

The World Series13, the ninth of 16 double-gender events on the 2008 SWATCH FIVB World Tour, features the men's and women's medal matches on Sunday. The winning teams in each gender will share the $28,000 first-place prizes