Ostrava, Czech Republic, June 23, 2018 – Rounds 2 and 3 of single elimination at the four-star Ostrava stop on the 2018 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour are to take place on Saturday to determine the best four teams in each gender, which will battle it out for the medals on Sunday. To the delight of the home crowd in the country’s third largest city, one women’s and one men’s Czech teams are still in contention and will be taking to the centre court at the Lower Vitkovice industrial heritage site.
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The competition day will once again start at 09:00 local time, from now with just courts 1 and 2 open for business. The women’s round of 16 is first on the schedule. The pool winners, who had a day off on Friday, will be back in action facing the challenges presented by those who had to pass through the first knockout round.
Centre court action will get underway with a match between third-seeded Brazilians Maria Antonelli and Carolina Solberg Salgado and well-known Spaniards Liliana Fernandez Steiner and Elsa Baquerizo McMillan. Switzerland’s Joana Heidrich and Anouk Verge-Depre will then take on Canada’s Heather Bansley and Brandie Wilkerson, before vacating the centre court for the clash between home favourites Barbora Hermannova and Marketa Slukova and Poland’s Kinga Kolosinska and Katarzyna Kociolek. The last second round women’s match on centre court will be between fourth-seeded Brazilians Agatha Bednarczuk and Eduarda Santos Lisboa - Duda and USA’s Emily Stockman and Kelley Larsen.
Latvia’s Janis Smedins and Aleksandrs Samoilovs will lock horns with third-seeded Dutchmen Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen in a big match at 12:30 to get centre court action going in the men’s department. Once they are done with each other, their place on the sand will be taken over by Poland’s Grzegorz Fijalek and Michal Bryl and Russia’s Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Nikita Liamin.
Czech pair Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner will be challenged by Russia’s Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Igor Velichko at 14:20, after which the spectators at centre court will get to see the titanic duel between Poland’s Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak, seeded fifth, and Brazilian legends Pedro Solberg and Bruno Oscar Schmidt, seeded seventh.
Once these, as well as the many exciting matches on court 2, are finished, it will be time for the quarterfinals, again with the ladies’ matches first.