04/12/2017 11:00
Elite Beach Volleyball returns to Jurmala with 2018 #EuroBeachVolleyU22
2018 CEV U22 Beach Volleyball European Championship
Luxembourg, December 4, 2017. After the highly successful 2017 European Championship held there this past August, a major international Beach Volleyball competition will be taking place in Jurmala in 2018 as well. Latvia’s most popular seaside resort will indeed host the 2018 edition of the U22 European Beach Volleyball Championship, with the event set to take place from July 26 to 29 on Majori beach, right by the Baltic Sea.
Jurmala has become a truly familiar name on the global Beach Volleyball map, even more after the city played host to the 2017 #EuroBeachVolley, the largest event of this kind to take place in any of the Baltic States.
As a result, the City of Jurmala and the Latvian Volleyball Federation expressed their wish to add another chapter to their success story – and Jurmala will welcome in late July 2018 the most promising rising stars in European Beach Volleyball.
Home favourites Tina Graudina and Anastasija Kravcenoka will be trying to use the home advantage to claim back the U22 European title they won in 2016 in Thessaloniki, Greece. Graudina knows how to exploit the home advantage to the most since back in 2015 she won the U18 European title in Riga along with former partner Paula Neciporuka. Earlier this summer, Graudina and Kravcenoka delighted the Latvian fans in Jurmala as they progressed to the quarterfinals of the ‘senior’ #EuroBeachVolley, losing only to eventual bronze medal winners Chantal Laboureur and Julia Sude of Germany.
The 2018 #EuroBeachVolleyU22 will be an opportunity to chase further international accolades also for Mihails Samoilovs and Kristaps Smits. Samoilovs/Smits claimed a bronze medal from last year’s U19 World Championship in Larnaca, Cyprus and another bronze at this year’s U21 World Championship in Nanjing, China. Mihails Samoilovs, the younger brother of former ‘senior’ European champion Aleksandrs, is a native of Jurmala and therefore he will be extra motivated in an effort to claim his first European medal.
Latvia will be hosting the #EuroBeachVolleyU22 for the first time in history – but Jurmala previously played host to the inaugural U20 competition in 1996 and Riga organised the U18 European Championship in 2015.
|