Vienna, Russia, August 1, 2017 - After posting their worst FIVB World Tour finish 10 days ago in Poland, Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Nikita Liamin have bounced back at the 2017 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships presented by A1 to win three matches highlighted by a win here Tuesday over a Belgium team.
Seeded sixth in the 11th edition of the World Championships, Krasilnikov and Liamin posted openings wins over pairs from Morocco and Latvia before capturing the Pool F title Tuesday with a 2-0 (21-16, 21-15) win in 33 minutes over 19th-seeded Dries Koekelkoren/Tom van Walle of Belgium.
Prior to Vienna, Krasilnikov and Liamin placed 25th at the Olsztyn event in Poland where the Russians were upset in pool play by Adrian Carambula/Alex Ranghieri of Italy and Adrian Gavira/Pablo Herrera of Spain.
Liamin, who placed fifth in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games with Dmitri Barsouk, said Tuesday’s win “was a very important game for us because it means first place in our group. Today was very difficult because it was very windy. Sometimes it helped, sometimes it didn’t. It’s very good for us but now all teams are very strong and will have to concentrate.”
Krasilnikov, who placed fourth in the Rio Olympics with Konstantin Semenov, and Liamin formed their partnership this season and currently rank as the No. 1 men’s team on the FIVB World Tour. The Russians have netted 2017 gold medal finishes in Iran and the Netherlands along with a second place on home sand in Moscow at the start of June.
Other teams winning group titles on Tuesday were fourth-seeded Evandro Goncalves/Andre Loyola of Brazil (Pool D), seventh-seeded Piotr Kantor/Bartosz Losiak of Poland (Pool G), ninth-seeded Gavira/Herrera (Pool I), 10th-seeded Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen of The Netherlands, 11th-seeded Daniel Lupo/Paolo Nicolai of Italy (Pool K), 13th-seeded Ben Saxton/Chaim Schalk of Canada (Pool L) and 23rd-seeded Jefferson Santos Pereira/Cherif Younousse of Qatar (Pool B).
The $1-million FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships presented by A1 will feature the final eight men’s pool play matches and four lucky losers matches on Wednesday along with 16 women’s elimination matches on the three courts at the state-of-the art venue at Donauinsel in Vienna.
A total of 216-matches will be contested over a 10-day period at the World Championships where the winning men’s and women’s teams will each split the $60,000 first-place prizes. The women’s medal matches will be played on August 5 and the men’s on August 6. With 96 teams from 40 countries in the competition, pool play highlights the first six days of play with the featured court being the 10,000-seat Red Bull Beach Arena.
