Baden, Austria, June 16, 2017. Despite the unstable weather conditions over Baden on Friday, the home crowd at centre court had a lot to cheer about, as two of Austria’s men’s pairs won big matches to advance to the elimination rounds of the 2017 CEV U22 Beach Volleyball European Championship presented by SPORT.LAND.NÖ. They were also sad to lose their third duo because of a knee injury sustained by Felix Friedl during his team’s second match in Pool E.
For Austria’s top duo, first-seeded Moritz Pristauz and Paul Buchegger, the big match of the day was the one against the other unbeaten team in Pool A, Latvia’s Kristaps Smits and Mihails Samoilovs. The fans on the centre court stands saw 55 minutes of top-level Beach Volleyball, in which Pristauz and Buchegger came back from a set down to stamp their place in the second elimination round with a 2-1 (19-21, 21-17, 15-10) victory.
"In the first set we had problems with the wind, because it changed direction quite often. Still, we got better and better during the match. In the middle of the second set we really found our way into the game. Especially our serving worked much better and the Latvian guys had troubles with the reception. We are now waiting for the draw and tomorrow we can watch our opponents and relax a bit," Moritz Pristauz analysed the match.
Paul Buchegger, who played for the Austrian men’s national team in the FIVB Volleyball World League just last week, commented on the quick change from indoor to sand he had to undertake. "There is no wind in the hall, so getting used to it was a bit difficult for me,” he said. “There is always wind by the sea in Latvia, so they are more used to that. We are proud to have won that game though. Tomorrow everything is possible for us!"
The third team of the host nation, Moritz Fabian Kindl and Marian Klaffinger, also had to go through a tie-breaker win in order to secure their place in the elimination rounds. Having lost their first game on Thursday, Kindl and Klaffinger grabbed the chance to please their fans in their second match. They mastered a dramatic 2-1 (22-20, 17-21, 15-9) win against Denmark’s Martin Trans Hansen and Jacob Stein Brinck in what was the big match for them on Friday. After they had secured their progression to the next stage of the tournament, they still went on to a 2-0 (21-13, 21-15) victory over the tough-fighting Bulgarians Georgi Stoyanov and Dimitar Kalchev to keep the crowd on their feet and happy.
A quarter of Friday’s 24 men’s matches ended after decisive tie-breaker sets, so there was plenty of excitement for everyone in the process of determining the final standings in the eight pools.
Eight teams, one in each pool, from eight different countries managed to win all their three games, thus topping the standings and qualifying directly for the second elimination round – Austria’s Moritz Pristauz and Paul Buchegger, Norway’s Mathias Berntsen and Anders Berntsen Mol, France’s Arnaud Loiseau and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat, Russia’s Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Artem Yarzutkin, Poland’s Mateusz Paszkowski and Mateusz Lysikowski, Germany’s Milan Sievers and Eric Stadie, Slovakia’s Jakub Ihnat and Patrik Pokopec and Switzerland’s Florian Breer and Yves Haussener. With one exception, all of them are seeded among the top eight. The 26th-seeded Slovak team was the only one that managed to break the seeding, taking over the top of the table in Pool G from Italy’s Marco Vitelli and Matteo Canegallo, seeded seventh.
Saturday’s competition will go through the first three elimination rounds leaving the semifinals and the medal matches for the last day on Sunday.
All centre court matches on Saturday are scheduled for live streaming on LAOLA1.tv.
Engage with the U22 European Championship on social media by using the competition’s official hashtag #EuroBeachVolleyU22.
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