02/08/2019 23:30
Three Polish teams delight home crowd by reaching quarterfinals in Malbork
2019 World Tour 1-Star - Malbork
Malbork, Poland, August 2, 2019. The second day of action at the 1-Star World Tour event in Malbork was a very exciting one to follow. Many good teams, including previous World Tour medallists such as Pavel Piatrushka/Aliaksandr Dziadkou of Belarus or Latvia’s Toms Smedins/Haralds Regza were due to entertain a full stadium in Malbork. However, the home heroes from Poland were those to shine as they claimed three out of the four spots at stake to progress straight to the quarterfinals.
Friday’s programme featured the Main Draw pool matches. The young Italian team – Manuel Alfieri and Mauro Sacripanti – who had qualified the day before were due to challenge Polish two-time Olympian Mariusz Prudel and his young partner, Mikołaj Miszczuk. The Italians played a good game but that was not enough to stop the home side.
No. 2 seeds Dziadkou/Piatrushka lost their first match in the tournament to Poland’s qualifiers Michał Kądzioła and Marcin Ociepski - who won 21-15, 19-21, 15-5. The team from Belarus will fight for their spot in the Round of 12 Saturday against another Polish duo, Milosz Kruk/Dominik Poznański.
Pool C was the only one not to feature a Polish winner. Lithuania’s Patrikas Stankevicius and Audrius Knasas showed very solid skills and advanced to the quarterfinals without losing a single set. The same applies to Michał Korycki and Martin Chiniewicz (pictured above), who took down the Germans Lukas Pfretzschner/Robin Sowa and Czechs Jindrich Weiss/Martin Tichy in Pool D.
“We are still hungry for more. We have repeated the result we achieved in Siofok last year, but we feel very well and we are sure that we are going to fight for a spot in the semis. This is our goal,” said Korycki.
Volleyball workshops, activities for children and concerts are also part of the World Tour event in Malbork. The organisers try to entertain the fans in and outside of the stadium and they hope they will have a full house this weekend as well, including for Sunday’s finals. With three Polish teams sure of their participation in the quarterfinals, that should certainly help attract a large crowd.
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