09/07/2015 23:27
Baku 2015 European Games silver medallists through to Round 3 at Vaduz Satellite
2015 CEV Beach Volleyball Satellite - Vaduz
Vaduz, Liechtenstein, July 9, 2015. The CEV Satellite in Vaduz continued on Thursday with the men’s qualification round and three rounds of play in the women’s competition. As the weather conditions were just great in the capital of Liechtenstein, another 1,300 fans found their way to the centre court in downtown Vaduz also to cheer for home heroines Claudia Hasler and Petra Schifferle-Walser who are now eliminated from the competition but put on a good fight especially in their second match on Thursday night.
Schifferle-Walser and Hasler had received a wild card to enter the tournament in Vaduz and were seeded as no. 4 in the Main Draw. On Thursday they played their first match at noon losing quite clearly to Russia’s Olga Motrich and Ksenia Ezhak (7-21, 15-21). They returned to the court later in the evening for their second match of the day where they played the reigning U22 European champions, Karolina Baran and Jagoda Gruszczynska of Poland. Schifferle-Walser and Hasler had three set points but ended up losing a close and dramatic first set by 26-28 before everything went just easy for Baran and Gruszczynska who pocketed the second one by 21-10. Schifferle-Walser and Hasler performed well especially at blocking and serving but they lacked consistency in attack. The home heroines end their campaign on two defeats and are ranked 13th.
Austria’s Lena Plesiutschnig and Katharina Schützenhöfer, who recently claimed silver at the Baku 2015 European Games and are also the 2011 U20 European champions, did not have any major problems in their opening match with Lynne Beattie and Melissa Coutts of Scotland (21-11, 21-19). Their second match was one of the highlights of the day in Vaduz as they had to fight for three sets before edging Diana Zolnercikova and Martina Jakubsova of the Czech Republic (21-19, 18-21, 15-12).
The gold medallists from the Baku 2015 European Games, Switzerland’s Nicole Eiholzer and Nina Betschart, lost in the first round to Zolnercikova/Jakubsova (18-21, 22-24) but got back on track later in the day as they re-started their campaign from the losers’ bracket edging Beattie and Coutts 21-14, 21-15.
The teams that have made it straight to Round 3 after scoring two consecutive wins are – apart from Plesiutschnig/Schützenhöfer – Germany’s Teresa Mersmann/Isabel Schneider, Latvia’s Inese Jursone/Tina Graudina and France’s Laura Longuet/Alexandra Jupiter, who failed to make the Main Draw earlier this week at the FIVB Major Series in Gstaad and are now shining in Vaduz.
Men’s qualification determines final eight teams for Main Draw
The men’s qualification on Thursday helped complete the field for the Main Draw starting on Friday. Switzerland’s Quentin Métral and Michiel Zandbergen caused the real sensation as they upset the gold medallists from last year’s Youth Olympics in Nanjing, Russia’s Artem Yarzutkin and Oleg Stoyanovskiy. The Russians were the second-seeded pair in the tournament but the Swiss edged past after three close sets (22-20, 15-21, 15-12) to join in the Main Draw high-calibre teams such as Germany’s Sebastian Fuchs and Thomas Kaczmarek, the top seed of the Vaduz Satellite. The Main Draw also includes the likes of reigning U23 world champions Maciej Kosiak/Maciej Rudol of Poland and of Germany’s twins Bennet and David Poniewaz, who last year finished in fourth place at the U23 World Championships in Myslowice. The Poniewaz brothers were second at the CEV Satellite in Vaduz last year where they lost the final to Austria’s Tobias Winter and Lorenz Petutschnig, the no. 6 seed this time around.
Home heroes Manuel Gahr and Maximilian von Deichmann – who missed the last edition of the CEV Satellite in Vaduz and recently claimed silver at the Games of the Small States of Europe (GSSE) held in Reykjavik, Iceland – will start their home campaign on Friday at 12:30 taking on Belgium’s Dries Koekelkoren and Tom Van Walle.
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