Alanya, Turkey, July 16, 2017. Finland’s Taru Lahti-Liukkonen and Anniina Parkkinen triumphed with the gold medals at the 2017 CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship - Alanya Masters after emerging victorious from a thrilling final with Germany’s Kim Behrens and Anni Schumacher. The bronze medals went to Italy’s Marta Menegatti and Rebecca Perry.
Cruising straight through the winners’ bracket, Lahti and Parkkinen continued their streak onto the semifinals where they disposed of Menegatti and Perry in straight sets – 2-0 (21-17, 21-17).
Behrens and Schumacher, who had already lost to the Finns in the third round, had to take a short detour through the losers’ bracket where they gave Spain’s Elsa Baquerizo McMillan and Paula Soria Gutiérrez a 2-0 (21-12, 21-18) shutout before repeating this performance in the all-German semifinal against compatriots Sandra Ittlinger and Teresa Mersmann – 2-0 (21-16, 21-18).
The full tribunes at centre court at Kleopatra Beach got to enjoy a really hard-fought final with some fantastic rallies with solid contribution from both sides of the net. The first two sets went well into extra-time. Behrens and Schumacher stayed more concentrated in the last rallies of the first set to take the lead, but Lahti and Parkkinen kept their cool, managed to save some match points for the German team and took the second to tie the match. The tie-breaker was no less exciting, but it was the Finns that had the momentum that took them to a 2-1 (22-24, 25-23, 15-12) triumph after more than one hour of playtime.
This is the first ever gold medal at such a high level for either of the two Finnish players. “The feeling is amazing! We had a great tournament – we won all our matches,” 20-year-old Anniina Parkkinen said. “In addition to these trophies and the gold medals, we are taking away with us from Alanya the great feeling and all the memories we have from the games.”
“Our opponents in the final played really well, but we had a really good block-defence and that was the key to our success, even through the whole tournament,” Taru Lahti commented.
The bronze medal match before that was also a very tough battle between two equally strong teams. Menegatti and Perry managed to close both sets narrowly in their favour and made the podium after a 2-0 (21-19, 21-19) win against Ittlinger and Mersmann.
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