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05/06/2015

World Champion No. 1 seeds Okay in Porec

Porec, Croatia, June 5, 2015 - For some reason, being the No. 1-seeded team in the upcoming FIVB “senior” Beach Volleyball World Championships was something “sacred” here Friday as Reinder Nummerdor and Christiaan Varenhorst of The Netherland were the only top-ranked team in the US$800,000 Porec Major to win their pool.

Seeded sixth in the inaugural event on the SWATCH Beach Volleyball Major Series, Nummerdor and Varenhorst captured Pool F with a 3-0 record, including a win over compatriots and reigning FIVB world championships Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen. When the 2015 world championships start June 26 in The Hague as The Netherlands will hosting the event at four sites, Nummerdor and Varenhorst will be the top-seeded pair.

Of the seven pairs “breaking-through” to gain a “bye” for the first-round of elimination to be played late Friday, the success of young Brazilians Vitor Felipe and Alvaro Filho was “surprising” as the 20th-seeded team had to win country quota and qualifying matches Tuesday and Wednesday to net a Main Draw berth where they captured Pool D with a 2-1 record to improve their Porec Major mark to 5-1.

Other “break-throughs” were posted by 10th-seeded Daniele Lupo/Paolo Nicolai of Italy (Pool G), 12th-seeded Jake Gibb/Casey Patterson of the United States (Pool E), 15th-seeded Clemens Doppler/Alexander Horst of Austria (Pool B), 16th-seeded Ben Saxton/Chaim Schalk of Canada (Pool A), 19th-seeded Youssef Krou/Edouard Rowlandson of France (Pool C) and 25th-seeded Viacheslav Krasilnikov/Konstantin Semenov of Russia (Pool H).

The Russians joined Krou and Rowlandson in posting comebacks from last week’s Moscow Grand Slam where both teams placed 25th. What make Moscow “more miserable” for Krasilnikov and Semenov was the Russians were the event’s defending champions after capturing the 2014 gold medal in the Russian capital.

Before the “miserable Moscow” performance, Krou and Rowlandson opened the 2015 international season with their fourth-straight podium placement by capturing a bronze medal in Fuzhou, China, ,The pair ended the 2014 FIVB World Tour season by winning gold in Xiamen (China) and finishing third in Doha (Oatar) and Maugaung (South Africa).

Thursday’s schedule for men will conclude with eight first-round elimination matches featuring the second-place finishers in the pool against third-place teams from their groups. Here is the schedule.

• Murat Giginoglu/Volkan Gogtepe, Turkey (24th-seeded, Qualifying seed No. 3) vs. Isaac Kapa/Christopher McHugh, Australia (27)• Jackson Henriquez/Jesus Villafane, Venezuela (29, Q10) vs. Tri Bourne/John Hyden, United States (5)• Alison Cerutti/Bruno Oscar Schmidt, Brazil (1) vs. Emanuel Rego/Ricardo Santos, Brazil (2)• Alexander Walkenhorst/Stefan Windscheif, Germany (14) vs. Josh Binstock/Sam Schachter, Canada (17)• Adrian Gavira/Pablo Herrera, Spain (7) vs. Evandro Goncalves/Pedro Salgado, Brazil (9)• Adrian Carambula/Alex Ranghieri, Italy (31, Q28) vs. Sean Rosenthal/Stafford Slick, United States (13)• Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen, Netherlands (11) vs. Markus Bockermann/Lars Fluggen, Germany (26, Q6)• Lombardo Ontiveros/Juan Virgen, Mexico (28, Q9) vs. Grzegorz Fijalek/Mariusz Prudel, Poland (3)

The Porec Major’s medal matches for women will be played Saturday while the men’s “final four” contests will be staged Sunday. The winning teams in both genders will share the $57,000 first-place prizes along with gathering 800 “valuable” points that will help determine the field for the season-ending SWATCH Major Series event in the United States at Fort Lauderdale, Fla.

Following this and next week’s SWATCH Major Series event in Norway, the FIVB World Tour crosses the Atlantic Ocean for an event in the United States in St. Petersburg, Fla. The June schedule ends with the start of the world championships in The Netherlands. Reigning FIVB world champions Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen of The Netherlands are entered this week.

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