Uludag, Turkey, March 2, 2018. The four men’s and the two women’s teams that have already qualified for the third round of their respective tournaments in Uludag are all among the top seeds at this fourth stop on the 2018 CEV Snow Volleyball European Tour as main draw action got underway on Friday in cold and windy conditions.
The four highest ranked men’s pairs – three from Russia and one from Poland – managed to go through the first two rounds undefeated to stay on the winners’ bracket.
The #1 seed, Russia’s Ruslan Daianov and Taras Myskiv, did not lose any sets on the first competition day, but their first opponents, Maxim Van Haesendonck and Bjorn Somers from Belgium, got quite close to upsetting them in the second set of their match. The Russians claimed a 2-0 (11-8, 13-11) victory before facing compatriots Vsevolod Bobrikov and Vladislav Mikhalev in the second round. The only team that earned their main draw spot in Thursday’s qualifications gave Daianov and Myskiv some hard time in the first set, but the pre-favourites managed to close the deal in straight sets – 2-0 (12-10, 11-3).
“Uludag is a good place for Snow Volleyball,” Daianov commented. “We played against the guys we train with back in Russia and we are glad to have won.”
“There are no easy matches ahead for us,” Myskiv added. “Only the strong teams come to the third round, so we must prepare well for the hard matches to come.”
Poland’s Michal Matyja and Piotr Janiak, seeded second, also mastered a couple of shutouts. First, they overpowered Turkey’s Mehmet Civgin and Hasan Huseyin Yildirim for a 2-0 (11-8, 11-8) win. Then, they cruised to a merciless 2-0 (11-6, 11-3) against Switzerland’s Raphael Zurgilgen and Remo Spahr.
Third-seeded Russians Ruslan Bykanov and Maksim Hudyakov lost the first set they played in Uludag, but then came back for a 2-1 (9-11, 11-5, 11-7) victory over Ukraine’s Oleksandr Ioisher and Eduard Reznik. In the second round, they also had to face a fellow Russian duo, Yury Bogatov and Pavel Rakusov, and mastered a 2-0 (11-8, 11-8) straight-setter.
Ivan Golovin and Valeriy Durnin, also from Russia, seeded fourth in the main draw, persevered through a couple of tie-breakers against home teams from Turkey, but emerged victorious with a third round ticket in hand. Golovin and Durnin had to show some of their best skills to come from behind for a hard-fought 2-1 (9-11, 15-13, 11-6) victory over Yusuf Ozdemir and Ali Cebeci. It was not any easier for the Russians against their next opponents – Safa Urlu and Ali Berke Sagir – but they still managed to come out with a 2-1 (12-10, 3-11, 11-5) win.
The women’s main draw action was initially scheduled to get underway on Saturday, but as the weather forecast is for a heavy storm, the organisers juggled with the timetables to have as many women’s matches as possible played on Friday.
In the 12-team main draw, the four top seeds start directly from the second round and two of them got a chance to do it on Friday, both stamping their spots in the third round with straight-set victories.
The 2017 Queens of the Snow, Michaela Knoblochová and Anna Dostalova from the Czech Republic, seeded as #1, claimed a 2-0 (11-5, 11-6) victory over first-round winners Rojda Bektas and Bensu Basak Engin. Fourth-seeded Russians Ksenia Dabizha and Liudmila Dayanova crushed Romania’s Zeynep Koc and Andreea Gabriela Savastita with a 2-0 (11-3, 11-2) landslider and will be going head-to-head against the Czechs in Saturday’s third round.
“At every stop this year we have different weather conditions. Here it is super windy and this made the match more fun,” Dostalova said.
“We just put the ball high in the wind and waited for our opponents to make mistakes,” Knoblochová added. “We had fun playing in these bizarre conditions. If we don’t have fun, we perform at one tenth of our regular game.”
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