Budapest, Hungary, August 10, 2019 – Toms Smedins and Haralds Regza beat fellow Latvians Mihails Samoilovs and Aleksandrs Solovejs to reach the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Budapest 1-Star tournament semifinals on Saturday.
Smedins and Regza had to go through the round of 12 earlier in the day and by the time they encountered their compatriots they had found their rhythm and enjoyed a 2-0 (21-16, 21-12) victory to reach Sunday’s semifinals.
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They will now face Daniel Bergerud and Lars Tveit Retterholt after the Norwegians defeated Serbia’s Djordje Klasnic and Milos Milic 2-0 (21-12, 21-10).
The Hungarian capital is hosting a World Tour tournament for the first time and it is taking place in a 1,000-seater arena at Lupa Beach which is located 20 minutes from the centre of Budapest. The winning teams in Budapest will collect the €1,000 first-place prizes and claim 200 Tokyo 2020 Olympic points.
In the other semifinal Italy’s Samuele Cottafava and Jakob Windisch will face Kensuke Shoji and Masato Kurasaka.
Italians Cottafava and Windisch fought back from losing the first set to beat Greece’s Vasileios Mandilaris and Angelos Mandilaris 2-1 (17-21, 21-15, 15-12), while Japan’s Shoji and Kurasaka defeated Slovenia’s Tadej Bozenk and Vid Jakopin 2-1 (13-21, 22-20, 15-13).
