MARSEILLE, FRANCE - Lisa Arce and Holly McPeak, the top-ranked team on the Women's Professional Volleyball Association, have reached the finals here Sunday (July 27) of this weekend's FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour event on Prado Beach.

Extremely high winds on Prado Beach stopped the play Saturday for both the women's and men's competition in the $270,000 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour event.

The FIVB event, the fourth international women's stop of 1997 and fifth for the men, features 32-team single-elimination competition.

Each match is the best two out of three games with rallying score to 21 (win by two with no cap).

This weekend's format will be the same system to be used at the $600,000 World Championships for men and women in Los Angeles September 10-13 at UCLA's Tennis Center.

Playing in their seventh international event together and their 23rd pro beach tournament, Arce and McPeak will face top-seeded Shelda Bede and Adriana Behar of Brazil in the championship match with the winners sharing the $25,000 first-place prize.

Seeded second in the competition, Arce and McPeak defeated third- seeded Brazilians Monica Rodrigues and Adriana Samuel 21-16, 19-21 and 21-18 to advance. Rodrigues and Samuel were the silver medalists at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games.

The semi-final win for Arce and McPeak also avenged a 12-5, 4-12 and 12-7 loss to Rodrigues and Samuel in the finals of the first FIVB event of the season in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (February 16).

Bede and Behar, who will be playing in their third-straight international final, advanced with a 21-19, 18-21 and 21-18 win over fourth-seeded Natalie Cook and Kerri Pottharst of Australia.

Arce and McPeak will be trying for their second-straight international win of the season as the WPVA pair downed Bede and Behar 12-10 and 12-4 to win the Pescara, Italy event July 6.

Winners of their last 12 international matches, Arce and McPeak will be trying for their fourth-straight win over Bede and Behar. The Brazilians had won the first two matches in the series before losing the next three.

Brazilians Sandra Pires and Jackie Silva, who defeated Rodrigues and Samuel to win the gold medal at the 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games, withdrew from the event earlier this week due to injuries. Pires and Silva won the FIVB Australian stop March 16.