22/12/2018 22:15
Russia’s Beach Volleyball star Semenov crowns snow debut with gold in Moscow
CEV Snow Volleyball European Tour 2019 - Moscow
Moscow, Russia, December 22, 2018. Teams from Russia completed a clean sweep of the men’s podium at the CEV Snow Volleyball European Tour 2019 stop in Moscow. The historic tournament held at Vodny stadium in the Russian capital reached its climax on Saturday night with the medal matches – and much to the delight of the local fans, teams from Russia swept the full set of medals at stake, with Russia’s Beach Volleyball star Konstantin Semenov contributing to his team’s gold-medal winning performance.
Top-seeded Semenov, Ruslan Bykanov, Maksim Hudyakov and Petr Korolev played another Russian team, namely from the city of Kazan, in the final. Vitaly Shabalin, Nikolay Polikarpov, Victor Markov and Adel Kayumov had exceeded all expectations by reaching the very last stage of the tournament.
It was a real final, which lasted three sets, with the underdogs from Kazan taking the first 15-12, before wasting some match points in the second. Semenov’s blocking game levelled the match and called for a tiebreaker where he and his partners cruised to a 15-8 win. Bykanov and Hudyakov have quite some experience in Snow Volleyball from last year’s European Tour and European Championship but Semenov, a former silver medallist from the European Beach Volleyball Championship and 2016 Olympian, crowned with gold his snow debut.
Russian superstar Konstantin Semenov celebrates his gold medal winning performance in Moscow.
“Big thanks to our ‘attacker’ Kostya Semenov. He joined our team at the last moment and became the key to our success. It was an excellent tournament. Many thanks to all the organisers, since they delivered a real spectacle. It is great that in our country we are able to hold such events so coolly and hopefully there will be more to follow. We hope that Snow Volleyball will continue to grow in future,” commented their success the winners from Russia.
In the match for the third place, there was no real fight. The team from Slovenia, the only non-Russian side to have made it to the semis, could not provide any real resistance to Pavel Rakusov, Petr Bakhnar, Nikita Kuzmin and Yury Bogatov, who won easily in two sets (15-7, 15-6) to complete a clean Russian sweep of the podium.
What a day in Moscow with the teams fighting with everything they had for the medals!
The winners of the competition received 100 CEV ranking points, as well as checks for 1,200 euros.
The next stage of the CEV Snow Volleyball European Tour 2019 will be taking place from January 11 to 13 in Erciyes/Kayseri, Turkey.
Click here for further information.
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