08/05/2014 19:00
Austria’s evergreens Doppler and Horst highlight Main Draw opening day
2014 CEV Beach Volleyball Satellite - Antalya
Antalya, Turkey, May 8, 2014. Alexander Horst and two-time European champion Clemens Doppler headline the CEV Satellite tournament in Antalya whose Main Draw got started on Thursday at the venue set up just nearby the WOW Kremlin Hotel. Doppler is coming back to the Beach Volleyball circuit nine months after suffering a serious injury at last year’s European Championship Final in Klagenfurt.
The Austrian players have already an impressive resume; Doppler is a two-time European champion (in 2003 and 2007) who also won silver in 2010 with Matthias Mellitzer. Horst, on the other hand, is a vice-European champion from the 2009 edition held in Sochi with former partner Florian Gosch, with whom he also finished fifth at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. Horst and Doppler teamed up in 2012 and qualified for the London Olympics where they had to be content with a disappointing 19th place.
On Thursday top-seeded Doppler and Horst started their campaign downing Turkey’s home heroes Sencer Urer and Anil Durgut in straight sets (15-7, 15-7, 15-9). Their second match was a little more complicated as they lost the first set (10-15) to Ukraine’s Sergiy Popov and Illia Kovalov before storming back to claim the next three (19-17, 15-13, 15-10) and make the third round where on Friday they will play Poland’s Maciej Kosiak and Maciej Rudol.
2012 Olympic bronze medalist Martins Plavins of Latvia is also among the star players in action this week in Antalya. Plavins and partner Aleksandrs Solovejs emulated Horst and Doppler by scoring two straight victories to progress to the third round of the Main Draw where they will take on Max Betzien and Malte Stiel of Germany.
As far as the home teams are concerned, only Murat Giginoglu and Selcuk Sekerci will continue the tournament on Friday. Last year’s semifinalists opened their quest for home glory by beating Italy’s Matteo Cecchini and Matteo Martino but then suffered a setback as they lost by 1:3 (15-8, 18-20, 9-15, 15-10) to Tim Holler and Jonas Schröder of Germany. Giginoglu and Sekerci got back on track later in the afternoon as they beat their compatriots Engin Özbek and Ersin Durgut by 3:1 to keep alive their dreams of home glory and play Russia’s Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Artem Yarzutkin on Friday.
Due to weather conditions – heavy rain poured down in the afternoon – four matches initially scheduled for Thursday were eventually postponed to Friday morning.
Click here for more information on the CEV Satellite in Antalya including detailed results, photos and much more
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