Canada successfully defended their women's beach volleyball title ©Getty Images

Canada's Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Paredes successfully defended their women's beach volleyball title tonight at Smithfield here at the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games, emerging from a three-set thriller against Australia.

In the final, they faced Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy, the Olympic silver medallists for the title.

The 2019 world champions were on a quest to win their second gold medal at the Games, but went down in the first set.

But they recovered to win the match 22-24, 21-17, 15-12.

"To be able to defend a title is one of the most challenging things to do, so this holds a lot of weight because it has been four years since our last one and a lot can change - a lot of teams have improved," said Humana-Paredes in her post-match interview.

Australia's Chris McHugh and Paul Burnett claimed the men's gold ©Getty Images
Australia's Chris McHugh and Paul Burnett claimed the men's gold ©Getty Images

The bronze medal went to Miller Pata of Vanuatu again and her new team-mate Sherysyn Toko, coming from behind to defeat Alice Zeimann and Shauna Polley 10-21, 22-20, 15-10.

Chris McHugh and Paul Burnett of Australia won the men's competition with a 17-21, 21-17, 20-18 victory against Sam Schachter and Daniel Dearing from Canada.

Javier and Joaquin Bello won England's first medal in beach volleyball, claiming bronze with a 21-11, 21-12 victory over Venuste Gatsinzi and Olivier Ntagengwa of Rwanda.