19/06/2015 17:07
Teams from four countries make women’s semis for truly European final showdown
2015 European Games
Baku, Azerbaijan, June 19, 2015. There are 50 nations competing at the Baku 2015 European Games and as many as four are represented in the semis of the women’s Beach Volleyball tournament. The competition at the Beach Arena entered its most exciting stages on Friday afternoon with four classy quarterfinal matches with teams from Austria, Italy, Lithuania and Switzerland now continuing their quest for a medal. The semis will be played on Saturday and will be followed later in the evening by the bronze and gold medal matches. Italy’s Laura Giombini and Giulia Toti will play Swiss rising stars Nicole Eiholzer and Nina Betschart whilst in the other semi Lithuania’s golden girls Monika Povilaityte and Ieva Dumbauskaite will take on Austria’s Lena Plesiutschnig and Katharina Schützenhöfer.
Click here for more info including entry lists, results and much more
Click here for a live gallery of the Beach Volleyball competition
Two tie-break dramas…
The programme of the quarterfinals started on Friday afternoon with a very close match starring Plesiutschnig/Schützenhöfer and Russia’s Maria Prokopeva and Ekaterina Syrtseva. The more experienced Russian tandem was off to a solid start easily claiming the opening set but the 2011 U20 European champions from Austria responded by controlling the second one from start to end. The fight for a spot in the semis continued in the tie-break where the young Austrians produced some terrific actions to make it to the next-to-last stage of the tournament (16-21, 21-13, 15-12).
“We are absolutely thrilled,” Katharina and Lena said. “Though we won a European gold back in 2011, this was an age group competition and the teams playing here are of a totally different calibre. These are the first ever European Games and we just made the semis, we can’t believe it!” they added. The tie-break had turned into an uphill climb for the Austrians but things changed after a spectacular defence action by Schützenhöfer, Plesiutschnig acknowledges. “That was the turning moment of the match in my opinion. And now we just want to keep going and are determined to win our first major gold medal.”
The semi-final with Povilaityte/Dumbauskaite will be a remake of the match that these teams played in the pool phase: “We had three match points but we ended up losing that match,” Katharina Schützenhöfer says. “So now we want to make amends for this.” The Austrians have been playing together for almost two years now after Schützenhöfer teamed up with 2011 European silver medallist Barbara Hansel back in 2013 but that partnership lasted only for six months. “We came back together in September 2013 and since then we have always played together, we had to move to Vienna to train under our coaches and we have been on a sort of permanent training camp ever since.”
Italy’s Laura Giombini and Giulia Toti (pictured) who are playing here only their second tournament together – they finished second at a WEVZA zonal event in Barcelona a couple of weeks ago – continued their triumphal march with a hard-fought tie-break win over Jolien Sinnema and Rimke Braakman of the Netherlands. The final section of the third set was a dramatic one with the Italians celebrating their victory only after cashing their fourth match ball (21-19, 14-21, 18-16).
“We played with a lot of character and enthusiasm and this way we could stand the difficult moments we had in this match, including the tie-break where we had to come back from behind,” Giombini says. “We have put all of our hearts into this match, I just can’t fully realise that we are in the semis of the European Games. There were some Italians cheering us on from the stands, I believe they were athletes from other sports who have come to see us. Tomorrow we will get to play again on the centre court and I look forward to it. The arena is just great and the more people we have in the stands, the more motivation I feel and I usually perform my best under such conditions.”
…and two one-sided semis
The other semis were a lot more one-sided with Dumbauskaite/Povilaityte and Eiholzer/Betschart that did not drop a set in their matches with Karolina Rehackova/Eliska Galova of the Czech Republic and Spain’s Angela Lobato/Paula Soria, respectively.
Karolina Rehackova and Eliska Galova from the Czech Republic did their best to stop the run of the so far unbeaten Dumbauskaite and Povilaityte but they did not succeed in doing this. The teams exchanged the lead back and forth in the opening set up to 12 all before the Lithuanians put more pressure with their service and broke away to 19:13, eventually ending the set at 21-17. The second set was close only up to 3 all and after that it was some kind of a show for the Lithuanian girls. They were cheered on by the Azerbaijani crowd and eventually closed the set and the match at 21-14.
Ieva Dumbauskaite sounded very confident after winning her quarterfinal: “I felt good right after entering the court and knew that we stood a chance of making the semis. I could feel it in my body. If I’m shaking it’s never going to be good. But this time around I was calm and that helped. We were both very brave and could show them that we would not give up. It’s a fantastic feeling being in the semis, we are so happy,” she said after the match.
Rehackova and Galova, on the other hand, looked quiet and disappointed: “Our side-out was terrible and we made many mistakes. We lost many points this way. It’s not possible to win if you are playing as bad as we did,” Galova said.
The last quarterfinal lasted for only 35 minutes as Angela Lobato Herrero and Paula Soria Gutierrez of Spain did not stand any real chance in their match with Nina Betschart and Nicole Eiholzer of Switzerland. In the first set the Swiss team tookcommand of the operations right from the beginning with their strong serve and good transitions. The Spaniards could never pose any real threat to their opponents also in the second set and the match ended in a quick 21-14, 21-13 win for Betschart and Eiholzer.
“We are so happy that we could make this happen. We served strong and we never lost tempo in our game. We were very determined and never let the Spanish team find their way into the match actually,” said a visibly happy Nina Betschart after the match.
“We had discussed before the match that we should hold tight together and don’t lose tempo and the important thing was to play our own game. And the tactics we chose were successful,” added Nicole Eiholzer.
As for the semi-final with Giombini and Toti, Betschart said: “We will sit down with our coaches now and analyse how we can prepare this match in the best way.”
|