Sofia, Bulgaria, August 9, 2020 – Third-seeded Quentin Metral & Yves Haussener hammered out a hard-fought 2-1 (22-20, 16-21, 15-8) victory over second-seeded Swiss compatriots Marco Krattiger & Florian Breer in the nationally televised final of the €20,000 Sofia Beach Pro Club Opening men’s tournament, the first high-level international beach volleyball event held in Bulgaria since 2013 when the CEV U23 European Championships took place in Varna.
“We are really happy to have played at this event, because there aren’t that many tournaments these days, and we are even happier to have won it,” Yves Haussener, who won gold at the 2014 FIVB U17 World Championship and silver at the 2016 FIVB U19 World Championship, both in partnership with Florian Breer, told fivb.com after the end of the awarding ceremony.
Spectacular dive by Yves Haussener during the final
“This was a great and rare opportunity to compete and we had to take it. I’m really happy to be here. The complex is really nice and it was a fun tournament,” said Quentin Metral, who teamed up with Haussener ahead of the 2019 season. “Next, we are going to play qualifications at the FIVB World Tour one-star event in Baden. We hope to make the main draw and then everything is possible. Here in Sofia, we saw that we can beat some really good teams and we are confident.”
The bronze medals went to Czechia’s Jan Dumek & Vaclav Bercik, seeded fourth, who overcame the tough resistance of Bulgaria’s highest-seeded pair Konstantin Mitev & Branimir Grozdanov [8] on the way to a 2-0 (23-21, 21-17) win in the third place match.
The Sofia Beach Pro Club Opening medallists
“It turned out a really nice tournament. Initially, I was a bit surprised to find out that a competition of such a high level was about to take place in Bulgaria,” said 35-year-old Konstantin Mitev, a 2010 World Tour participant, who also finished fifth at the last senior-level international event held in his country, the 2012 CEV European Championship Varna Masters. “For us, reaching the semifinals was a very big achievement, which makes us very happy. It was a small miracle given that we had very little time to prepare properly. I am a bit sorry for losing our semifinal and the third place match, but congratulations to the victors! They deserved it...”
Bulgaria’s Konstantin Mitev celebrates a point during the bronze medal match
In the absence of Latvian stars Janis Smedins & Aleksandrs Samoilovs, who were forced to a last-minute withdrawal by the coronavirus-prompted international travel restrictions, a total of 19 duos from nine different countries (Austria, Bulgaria, Czechia, France, Italy, Lebanon, Serbia, Switzerland and Turkey) took part in the four-day tournament, held at the brand new Sofia Beach complex.
While the top-seeded Austrians Alexander Huber & Christoph Dressler, currently at #47 in the FIVB World Ranking, suffered a quarterfinal upset at the hands of Dumek & Bercik, it was also surprising to see neither of the two top Turkish teams, Murat Giginoglu & Volkan Gogtepe and Selcuk Sekerci & Safa Urlu, make the last four.
A women’s tournament at a similar level and the same prize money of €20,000 is in the plans of co-organiser Onur Kara, the owner of the Sofia Beach complex, for late August. As he told fivb.com, he hopes these opening events will just be the prelude to future World Tour stops starting as soon as this winter at the top-of-the-line, all-season beach volleyball facility consisting of eight sand courts, a swimming pool, a weight gym and offering hotel accommodation in the beautiful setting of the mountainous outskirts of the Bulgarian capital.