Roccaraso, Italy, February 17, 2018.  Following the open tournament yesterday, 24 men’s teams took to the courts at Pizzalto base camp today in 36 matches as part of the 2nd stop of the 2018 CEV Snow Volleyball European Tour.  With it being an Italian holiday the car park was packed, and so was the mountain, giving thousands of people some exposure to this emerging sport.

Among the teams who made it to the 4th round on Sunday were the Belgians Tim Van de Wielle/Bruno Masset who won against the Polish players Piotr Groszek/Mateusz Zieba (2-1), as well as the Russians Ivan Golovin/Valeriy Durnin who did not let the Italians Marco Raisa/Alessio Salviato win a set.

One of the big surprises of the tournament was the Italian pair of Christian Lalli/Gianluca Gianni who probably played the best games in their Snow Volleyball career in Roccaraso, but were unfortunately eliminated by the Russian team of Vsevolod Bobrikov/Vladislav Mikhalev.

Also among the teams who have already made it to Day 2 are the Polish CEV 2017 King of the Snow Michal Matyja, with his team-mate Piotr Janiak, and the Swiss team of Raphael Zurgilgen/Remo Spahr.

One of the most consistent teams in Roccaraso has been the Russian side of Ruslan Bykanov/Maksim Hudyakov, who also won the Open tournament on Friday, along with the Belgian pair Van de Wielle/Masset who took 2nd place on Friday.  Russian are bar far a dominant force, with them having four teams still fighting to be top of the podium.

Click here for the full results of Day 1.

As the women’s event is just a one-day competition, the travelling teams from Turkey and Slovakia took to the court over lunchtime in an exhibition match.

While an opportunity was also given to all of the kids in attendance to step onto the show court and give Snow Volleyball a try – they were also surprised by the attendance and participation of a couple of Yeti.

Away from the pressure of the Snow Volleyball competition, there was another challenge made to the Swiss men’s team of Zurgilgen/Spahr and the Slovakian women’s team of Silvia Poszmikova/Romana Jurenkova.  Six minutes to build the best Snowman that they could, the winner is being picked by social media so go to Facebook to case your vote: