Antalya, Turkey, July 11, 2019. With the first leg of pool play, the men’s CEV U22 Beach Volleyball European Championship 2019 got underway in Antalya on Thursday. The rising stars of European Beach Volleyball defied the sweltering July heat of southern Turkey and took to the four courts, at the Antalya Beach Volleyball Center and the Mediterranean University Beach Volleyball Center, to play their first matches of their quest for continental honours.
In one of the most interesting games of the day, France survived a late comeback attempt from Greece to emerge with a 2-1 (21-10, 19-21, 15-12) win. Ninth-seeded Timothée Platre and Théo Faure dominated the first set and started well in the second, but then Angelos Mandilaris and Stylianos Tzioumakas, seeded 24th, rallied back to draw level. A nip-and-tuck tie-breaker was still up for grabs at 12-12, when the French, enthusiastically supported by a group of noisy fans on the stands, scored three in a row to claim the victory in this Pool H encounter.
“We played a really good first set, with really good service. In the second set, we didn’t play so well and the opponents played better. The tiebreak was really hard, but we got the last three points and we won. We made one good block and one good defence at the right moment and that proved decisive,” said Platre and Faure after the game. “It is really good to have this support from family here. The level is very high. There are a lot of good teams and it will be hard, but we will do everything we can to go back to France with a medal.”
Above-the-net action in the Turkey vs. Latvia clash
In another exciting three-setter, bottom-seeded Rudolfs Stankevics and Arturs Rinkevics of Latvia pulled off a come-from-behind upset of top-seeded Turks Yusuf Ozdemir and Mustafa Susam – 2-1 (18-21, 21-18, 15-9) – to get Pool A going. The other Latvian team, defending champions Kristaps Smits and Mihails Samoilovs, seeded seventh, also celebrated victorious with 2-0 (21-8, 21-15) over Lithuania’s Marius Malinauskas and Aurimas Mazuras in their Pool G encounter.
Switzerland was the other country, whose two pairs came up with wins on Thursday. Eighth-seeded Florian Breer and Leo Dillier delivered a 2-0 (21-13, 21-14) shutout of Turkey’s Ali Cebeci and Eren Kanli in Pool H, while 29th-seeded Nathan Broch and Jonathan Jordan stunned fourth-seeded Norway (Nils Gunnar Ringøen and Johannes Helland-Hansen) 2-0 (21-17, 21-17) in Pool D.
Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, England, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain were the remaining winners on the first competition day of the men’s #EuroBeachVolleyU22 on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.
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