10/08/2014 20:55
2013 silver medallists Winter/Petutschnig improve to win gold at Vaduz
2014 CEV Beach Volleyball Satellite - Vaduz
Vaduz, Liechtenstein, August 10, 2014. The CEV Beach Volleyball Satellite in Vaduz celebrated this year its tenth anniversary and did so by breaking a series of records. Almost 11,000 fans visited the venue of the tournament set up in Vaduz downtown, with 3,000 only on the final day where Austria’s Tobias Winter/Lorenz Petutschnig emerged victorious at the end of the men’s competition. They beat Germany’s twins David and Bennet Poniewaz 21-18, 21-19 to improve on their performance from last year where they had to be content with the silver medal. The 2014 Vaduz Satellite got additional exposure with the live streaming of all matches played on the centre court as well as via its Facebook account that was visited by 5,000 fans throughout the week. The event will return in 2015 but on a different date – most probably July 8-12 – as it will be combined with the 20th anniversary of the Vaduz Film Festival.
The last day of competition at Städtle Vaduz got started with the semi-final matches. Germany’s Bennet and David Poniewaz had progressed to the final stages of the competition after starting their campaign already on Wednesday with the country quota. The German twins – who had finished fourth at this year’s U23 World Championship in Myslowice, Poland – had even routed last year’s finalists Tobias Winter and Lorenz Petutschnig in round 3 before the Austrian duo got back on track edging Belarus’ Aliaksandr Dziadkou/Aliaksandr Kavalenka in the losers’ bracket to also make the semis.
Winter and Petutschnig got to play the real sensation of the tournament, Italy’s Gianluca Casadei and Francesco Vanni, who in their first event together had progressed from the qualification to the semis. Vanni was even playing the first international tournament of his career but on Sunday their winning streak came to a close as the Italians lost to the more experienced Austrians in straight sets (22-24, 17-21). In the other semi-final, the Poniewaz twins stamped a double 21-16 to edge past Greece’s Georgios Kotsilianos and Nikos Zoupanis.
Casadei and Vanni returned to the sand for the bronze medal match where Kotsilianos and Zoupanis started out strong claiming the lead before the score was drawn at 12 all in the first set. Still in the end the two guys from Greece had the upper hand (21-19) as they regularly served on Casadei and Vanni could rarely show his skills in attack as well as in block. The Greek players kept momentum also in the second set where they opened strong thereby forcing their opponents to ask for a time-out by the time they trailed 3:8. It did not help and Kotsilianos/Zoupanis controlled the game through to the end (21-12) to win bronze. “We tried to play faster than we usually do and it worked pretty well,” they said. “We were mentally strong in this tournament and this played a role in our success.” Francesco Vanni, on the other hand, could not hide his disappointment referring to an old Italian saying: “We went to Rome but in the end we did not see the pope.”
The gold medal match was attended by 1,500 fans including the Prime Minister of Liechtenstein, Adrian Hasler. Quite curiously the final starred two teams who had started their adventure already on Wednesday in the country quota. This time, however, Winter and Petutschnig could avenge their previous defeat and cruised to a 21-18, 21-19 victory over the Poniewaz twins. “Again this year we had some bad matches at the beginning of the tournament but we improved step by step on our way to the final,” they said. “We decided to serve on David because we had realised that this had already happened on their previous matches of this tournament. He was very tired and our tactic worked just fine.”
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