Malbork, Poland, August 2, 2019 – Martin Chiniewicz and Michal Korycki enjoyed home comforts when they won two from two on the opening day of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour 1-Star Malbork tournament on Friday.
It is the first time that Malbork in Poland’s north east is hosting a World Tour tournament and it is taking place in a 650-year-old castle. The winning team in Malbork will collect the €1,000 first-place prizes and claim 200 Tokyo 2020 Olympic points.
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The Polish pair beat Germany’s Lukas Pfretzschner and Robin Sowa 2-0 (21-19, 21-13), and then followed up by seeing off the Czech Republic’s Jindrich Weiss and Martin Tichy with a 2-0 (21-15, 21-14) victory to book their place in the knockout rounds that take place on Saturday.
Chiniewicz and Korycki’s fellow Poles Mariusz Prudel and Mikolaj Miszczuk also enjoyed a brace of wins. First, they beat Italy’s Manuel Alfieri and Mauro Sacripanti 2-0 (21-15, 21-15) and then followed up by defeating Latvia’s Toms Smedins and Haralds Regza 2-0 (24-22, 21-3).
Michal Kadziola and Marcin Ociepski were the third Polish team to top their pool. They began with a 2-1 (21-15, 19-21, 15-6) win over Belarus’ Aliaksandr Dziadkou and Pavel Piatrushka and then made it two out of two by fighting back to beat Lithuania’s Artur Vasiljev and Robert Juchnevic 2-1 (20-22, 21-18, 15-9).
Patrikas Stankevicius and Audrius Knasas complete the four pool leaders. After the Lithuanians beat Japan’s Koichi Nishimura and Daisuke Shibata 2-1 (21-19, 19-21, 18-16), they stopped Poland’s Sebastian Kaczmarek and Adrian Sdebel from making it a clean sweep of Polish pool winners with a 2-0 (21-18, 21-9) victory.
