Moscow, Russia, August 14, 2019 – The men’s qualifications at the four-star Moscow stop on the 2019 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour did not provide for any surprises as for the most part the higher seeds lived up to their status and emerged with tickets to Thursday’s 32-team main draw.
In fact, Poland’s Maciej Rudol & Jakub Szalankiewicz, playing under #9, were the only ones who broke the seeding in the deciding qualification round, managing a hard-fought 2-0 (21-18, 25-23) victory over #8, Quentin Metral & Florian Breer of Switzerland.
Poland's Jakub Szalankiewicz ready to serve
In the only three-setter of the round, Mexico’s Lombardo Ontiveros & Juan Virgen, seeded fifth, outplayed Latvia’s Mihails Samoilovs & Aleksandrs Solovejs to claim a 2-1 (22-20, 16-21, 15-7) win.
Seventh-seeded Maksim Hudyakov & Ruslan Bykanov pleased the home crowd with a successful match against China’s Jiaxin Wu & Likejiang Ha. Hudyakov & Bykanov snatched a 2-0 (26-24, 21-17) victory and became the only Russian pair to emerge victorious from these qualifications.
“Today we were the first to interrupt a series of defeats for the Russian teams in the qualifications. At last week’s European Championship here in Moscow, Maksim and I played with different partners, so today it was a pleasure to play back together,” Bykanov commented. “At the same time, lack of preparation affected our game and some combinations did not work out for us. We slid into a simple game and did not invent anything, but we are glad we won. Winning is better than losing. It is always difficult with Chinese opponents. They play quickly and sometimes unpredictably.”
“We are very pleased that we have passed the qualification for the second year in a row,” Hudyakov added. “We really hope to go as far as possible, and to please our fans with a good game. Tomorrow is the pool stage and we will have at least two games. We will try to show our best beach volleyball.”
Austria’s Tobias Winter & Julian Hoerl, Ukraine’s Sergiy Popov & Iaroslav Gordieiev, Brazil’s Gustavo Albrecht Carvalhaes & Saymon Barbosa Santos, Netherlands’ Christiaan Varenhorst & Steven van de Velde and Germany’s Nils Ehlers & Lars Flueggen were the other five teams that won their second-round matches to progress to the main draw.
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