12/09/2014 20:14
Triple European champion Nummerdor claims clash of the veterans with Dmitry Barsouk at Baku Masters
2014 CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship - Baku Masters
Baku, Azerbaijan, September 12, 2014. The men’s competition at the Baku Masters – fifth and last stop of this year’s CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship – progressed on Friday with the first matches on schedule for the main draw. The actions will continue for the whole weekend and come to a close on Sunday with the medal matches. The eventual winners of the tournament will claim a spot for their country in the 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship.
16 teams are competing in the men’s main draw whose matches got started on Friday morning at 11 am local time in Baku. France’s Jean-Baptiste Daguerre and Yannick Salvetti opened the programme in Pool B with their 2-1 victory (20-22, 21-17, 15-9) over Aliaksandr Dziadkou and Aliaksandr Kavalenka of Belarus.
One of the major highlights of the day was provided by two real Beach Volleyball stars of the last decade, triple European champion Reinder Nummerdor of the Netherlands and 2007 world vice-champion Dmitry Barsouk of Russia. Nummerdor is competing in Baku alongside Christiaan Varenhorst after starting the season with Steven van de Velde and the Dutchmen were happy to celebrate a 21-19, 19-21, 15-13 victory in their opening match against Barsouk and partner Nikita Liamin. “Our opponents were very strong but we played a good match and claimed a much needed victory in the end,” Nummerdor and Varenhorst said. They eventually extended their winning streak later in the afternoon with another three setter (22-24, 21-9, 15-12) where they edged France’s Daguerre and Salvetti to cement their leadership in Pool B.
The expectations were high also for the home teams from Azerbaijan especially after their impressive performance at the second round tournament of the CEV Beach Volleyball Continental Cup held a couple of weeks ago in Belgrade. Unfortunately Artem Fedorov and his Brazilian-born partner Meilton Moses Santos lost both their matches in Pool D to pairs from Turkey and Austria. Turkey’s Murat Giginoglu and Volkan Gögtepe currently top the charts in the group as they did not drop a set in their matches with Fedorov/Santos (21-16, 21-18) and Italy’s Paolo Ingrosso/Andrea Tomatis (21-19, 21-16).
The other team from Azerbaijan also had to accept two defeats in their home debut. Leonid Gritsai and Bernardo Wermelinger Romano lost in straight sets to the top-seeded pair of the tournament, Russia’s Ruslan Bykanov and Viacheslav Krasilnikov (13-21, 17-21), and after that they did not win a set also in their match with Spain’s Francisco Alfredo Marco/Christian Garcia (18-21, 12-21). The bronze medallists from the CEV Biel/Bienne Masters currently lead the way in Pool A with two consecutive victories as the Spaniards claimed also their first match on Friday with France’s Youssef Krou and Edouard Rowlandson by 2:1 (17-21, 22-20, 15-13). “We are very pleased with being here and we will do everything we can in order to win a medal and possibly the tournament,” they said at the end of a beautiful day there on the shores of the Caspian Sea.
Two teams – Greece’s Georgios Kotsilianos/Nikos Zoupanis and Poland’s Piotr Kantor/Bartosz Losiak – set the pace in Pool C with two consecutive victories in their respective matches with Austria’s Florian Schnetzer/Michael Murauer and Serbia’s Sinisa Antonic/Marko Galesev.
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