Knokke-Heist, Belgium, August 17, 2019. The unpredictable Belgian weather kicked Saturday off with lots of rain showers. Despite the rain, Knokke-Heist welcomed a lot of fans eager to watch some more matches in the men’s main draw, where the tension was rising. All athletes gave the best off themselves in order to gain a spot in this FIVB 1-Star World Tour event semi-finals.

Yusuke Ishijima/Katsuhiro Shiratori (JPN) and Gilles Vandecaveye/Tim Degruyte (BEL) took the best start for the day with straight 2-0 wins on Saturday. The people in the stands had made the right decision to visit the event as they saw many tiebreaks during the last games of the pool phase. As the DJ got the crowd in the right vibes, the sun started to come through.

The women’s matches that were played started with the Round of 12 to decide which teams could fight for a spot into the quarters. The matches did not bring close results, but were still interesting for the spectators to follow - the same happened at the men’s side of the table. With one Dutch team and two Belgian teams, the stakes for some more battles between them were getting higher. However, both Belgian tandems lost their matches against Russia and France.

At the quarterfinals, concentration and focus was found all around the event venue. From the eight matches played, five of them were decided in a tiebreak. The most successful nation was Belgium, having two teams in the semi-finals.

Semi-finals women
- Emi van Driel/Raïsa Schoon (NED) vs Claudia Galindo/Andrea Galindo (COL)
- Maud Catry/Els Vandesteene (BEL) vs Cecilie Køllner Olsen/Sofia Nørager Bisgaard (DEN)

Semi-finals men
- Alexey Gusev/Pavel Shustrov (RUS) vs Tim Lemmens/Anshel Ver Eecke (BEL)
- Jérémy Silvestre/Timothée Platre (FRA) vs Maximilian Trummer/Mathias Seiser (AUT)

Click here for further information about the tournament, all matches can be watched on EuroVolley.TV