02/07/2014 19:00
Three-time European champion Reinder Nummerdor misses out on main draw spot in Novi Sad
2014 CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship - Novi Sad Masters
Novi Sad, Serbia, July 2, 2014. Teams from Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, and Spain won two matches on Thursday to make the main draw of the Novi Sad Masters, second stop of this year’s CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship. They will re-start their campaign on Thursday thereby joining the teams that were pre-seeded in the main draw of the tournament taking place right on the banks of the Danube river and whose winners will get a ticket to next year’s FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships in the Netherlands.
The teams from the host country could not provide the local fans with something to cheer about as they both were eliminated in the first round of the qualification tournament. Armin Dollinger and Clemens Wickler of Germany edged Nenad Tatic/Borislav Petrovic in straight sets (21-12, 21-12); Nenad Simeunovic and Nemanja Komar, both natives of Novi Sad, played a great match but in the end lost 12-21, 17-21 to the more experienced Austrian duo Peter Eglseer/Felix Koraimann. The Serbian fans will now focus their attention on the three teams pre-seeded in the main draw, and especially on Serbia’s top duo Sinisa Antonic/Marko Galesev who this year made their debut on the FIVB World Tour.
After upsetting Tatic and Petrovic, Germany’s Dollinger and Wickler went on to make the main draw after besting Bulgaria’s Nikolay Kolev and Konstantin Mitev in the second round (21-15, 21-13). Kolev and Mitev did not improve on last year’s performance where they also had failed to progress to the main draw whereas Dollinger is still on track to better last year’s seventh place which he had achieved with former partner Jonas Schröder.
Last year’s bronze medallist Sergiy Popov of Ukraine is competing this time at the Novi Sad Masters with Illia Kovalov. The Ukrainian pair started their campaign with a 2-1 victory (12-21, 21-17, 15-13) over Slovenia’s Danijel Pokersnik and Jure Peter Bedrac; however, Popov and Kovalov withdrew from the competition at the beginning of the second set in their second round match with Poland’s Damian Wojtasik and Dominik Witczak, thereby paving the way to the main draw for their opponents.
One of the major stars of the tournament in Novi Sad is undoubtedly three-time European champion Reinder Nummerdor of the Netherlands who last week returned to the sand at the FIVB Stavanger Grand Slam in Norway. Following the retirement of his long-time partner Richard Schuil, Nummerdor has teamed up with 19-year old Steven van de Velde. They still have a long way to go to produce the results Nummerdor was accustomed to – including 9 gold medals on the World Tour – and on Wednesday they missed on a spot in the main draw losing their second round match to France’s Youssef Krou and Edouard Rowlandson (19-21, 16-21).
“We are disappointed because we had come here hoping to make the podium,” Nummerdor said. “My partner is very young and I would like to help him make it to the last stages of such tournaments and to improve his game. I am confident that we will do better in the next tournament, and as always, we will be doing our best.”
Youssef Krou, on the other hand, did not hide his excitement: “This has been a very good day for us with two consecutive victories. We are especially happy with our second victory over the Dutch team whereby we secured our participation in the main draw which is starting tomorrow. After all, this is a very nice welcome by the city of Novi Sad which we are visiting for the first time. We have heard so many nice things about Serbia and we can see with our own eyes that they are all true.”
The other teams progressing to the main draw starting on Thursday at 9 am local time are Portugal’s Roberto Mauro Silva Reis/Fabricio Silva, Poland’s U23 world champions Maciej Kosiak and Maciej Rudol, Italy’s Matteo Cecchini/Matteo Martino, Belgium’s Bob Douwen and Robert Adriaensen as well as Spain’s Vicente Monfort/Javier Monfort.
All matches of the 2014 Novi Sad Masters are streamed live and for free on LAOLA1.tv
Click here for more info including detailed results, pictures and much more
|