24/05/2015 17:07
Ingrosso twins crown with gold fabulous run at Jurmala Masters
2015 CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship - Jurmala Masters
Jurmala, Latvia, May 24, 2015. Italy’s tandems continue to leave their mark on this year’s Beach Volleyball season. Last Sunday Alex Ranghieri/Marco Caminati had topped the charts of the FIVB World Tour Open in Lucerne and seven days later twins Matteo and Paolo Ingrosso have come out on top at the end of the Jurmala Masters, the first stop of the 2015 CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship. As they did so, they upset thousands of Latvian fans in attendance, cruising to a rather unexpected semi-final win over home heroes Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins.
The tournament organised on Majori beach right by the Baltic Sea came to an end on Sunday with four exciting matches. France’s Youssef Krou and Edouard Rowlandson – bronze medallists from the FIVB Fuzhou Open earlier this year – opened the programme with a 21-13, 17-21, 15-12 victory over first-seeded Grzegorz Fijalek and Mariusz Prudel of Poland. Next was the much anticipated semi-final starring home stars Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins but the local crowd did not get much to celebrate for the Ingrosso twins delivered a superb performance to stamp a 21-19, 21-18 win to move on to the gold medal match.
Samoilovs and Smedins – two-time silver medallists from the European Championship Final in 2013 and 2014 and winners of last year’s Jurmala Satellite – regrouped later in the afternoon and they provided the crowd with something to cheer about claiming bronze after besting Fijalek and Prudel in two sets (23-21, 21-9).
The final match that followed extended the winning race of the Ingrosso twins who dropped only one set in the knock-out stage of the Jurmala Masters – this happened in the round of 16 where they survived also to a dramatic tie-break with Poland’s Bartosz Losiak and Piotr Kantor. Matteo and Paolo Ingrosso continued to perform their best and sealed a 21-15, 21-17 victory to celebrate their greatest achievement so far. As for Krou and Rowlandson, the Frenchmen could be happy with their second international medal this season, following the bronze they had won at the FIVB Fuzhou Open in China about a month ago.
The awards ceremony that brought the tournament to an end was attended by CEV President André Meyer as well as by the President and Vice President of the Latvian Volleyball Federation, Mr Atis Sausnitis and Mr Maris Pekalis, and by CEV Vice President and Jurmala Masters Jury President, Mrs Banu Can Schürmann.
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