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Chronicle
Russian tennis player Svetlana Kuznetsova became the winner of the BTA Premier category tournament included in the US Open Series with a total prize fund of $700 thousand. In the final, Svetlana beat Polish player Agnieszka Radwanska - 6:4, 6:7 (7:9), 6:3.
Kuznetsova was not even among the “seeded” players at the Mercury Insurance Open, but she confidently moved through the tournament bracket, successively defeating Belgian Yanina Wickmayer (6:3, 2:6, 6:1) and Italian Sara Errani ( 6:1, 6:7, 7:5), American Coco Vandeweghe (7:5, 6:2) and another girl from the Apennine Peninsula, Flavia Pennetta (6:4, 6:0). The decisive match was dramatic. Our tennis player managed to maintain psychological confidence even after she was unable to convert four match points in the second set.
This is already the 13th title in Kuznetsova’s track record, whose main achievements are victories at the 2004 US Open and Roland Garros 2009. True, Svetlana has been performing unsuccessfully lately, often dropping out in the early stages of tournaments. Thanks to her success in San Diego, the Russian woman rose from 21st to 14th place in the individual BTA classification. There is only one change in the top ten of the new edition of the ranking: Agnieszka Radwanska ahead of our Vera Zvonareva and became ninth. Still ahead by a huge margin are American Serena Williams (8355 points), Serbian Jelena Jankovic (5900) and Danish Caroline Wozniacki (5710), who won the home tournament in Copenhagen last Sunday. Our Anna Chakvetadze stopped here at the semi-final stage, and she lost to Wozniacki.
In the men's ATP World Tour 500 tournament, Argentinean David Nalbandian defeated Cypriot Marcos Baghdatis in the final - 6:2, 7:6 (7:4). In the overall standings of the US Open Series, the leaders of which will be entitled to increased prize money at the US Open, a trifecta is observed among both girls and the stronger sex. Nalbandian, Americans Mardy Fish and Sam Querrey, Kuznetsova, Victoria Azarenka (Belarus) and Agnieszka Radwanska earned 70 points each.
China and Poland lead the Grand Prix
The Chinese and Polish women's volleyball teams lead the standings of the traditional annual Grand Prix commercial competition after the first weekend of play in the preliminary stage.
The peculiarity of the Grand Prix is that 12 teams identify six participants in the final tournament, playing each other in fours an unequal number of times. Last week, matches were played in Gdynia (Poland), Chengdu (China) and Sao Carlos (Brazil). The table is kept common for a dozen teams, and here only the girls from the Celestial Empire and the bronze medalists of Euro 2009, the Poles, go without losses, having won three “clean” victories and gaining nine points each. Let us remind you that this season, for the first time in the women's Grand Prix, the three-point system, well known to us from the Russian men's super league, will be used.
China defeated Holland on the third day - 3:1, with Manon Flier from the losing team bringing 32 points to her team. German national team player Margareta Kozuch had a higher personal performance indicator (33), but the Bundesteam nevertheless lost to the Dominican Republic team - 2:3. The Poles defeated the USA - 3:1, and on another continent the home defeat of the Olympic champions Brazil against the best team in Europe - Italy - 1:3 looks somewhat unexpected. Following China and Poland in the table are Brazil, Holland, Japan and Italy - six points each.
Sanchez excelled at the Vuelta Burgos
Spanish cyclist Samuel Sanchez, who was the main rival of our Denis Menshov in the fight for third place in the general classification of the Tour de France, excelled at the home stage race of the European calendar, Vuelta Burgos.
The fourth cyclist at the end of the Great Loop, representing the Basque team Euskaltel-Euskadi, won only one second in the overall standings over his compatriot Ezequiel Mosquera (Sacobeo Galicia). The best representative of the Russian Katyusha was the Italian Giampaolo Caruso - seventh place, 45 seconds behind the winner. The nominal leader of our cycling group, Vladimir Karpets, who completed the Tour de France ahead of schedule due to a hand injury, used his participation in the Vuelta Burgos to get in shape without solving any particularly serious problems. In the final protocol, Vladimir is on the 27th line (more than five minutes of deficit). This race on the roads of Spain was held in five stages.
Record set on a sand court in Poland
The next stage of the “Grand Slam” series as part of the “World Tour” of beach volleyball in the Polish city of Stare Jablonki was marked by a record-long game played in the semi-finals by the Olympic champions of Beijing, Americans Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser, against the titled Brazilians Marcio Araujo and Ricardo. The team from the USA lost 39:41 in the first set, but then brought the match to victory, winning the next two games 21:19 and 15:12. As a result, the winners of the “gold” of the 2008 Summer Games climbed to the highest step of the World Tour competition podium for the seventh time this season, in the decisive match they were stronger than the current world champions, the Germans Julius Brink and Jonas Reckermann - 21:19, 21:19. Our Igor Kolodinsky and Yaroslav Koshkarev stopped in the 1/8 finals.
As for the marathon game, it holds a record for the number of points awarded in the entire history of the men's World Tour, that is, since 1987. The authorship of the previous achievement belonged to Bosma - Ortiz (Spain) and Oliveira - Fernandez (Portugal), who played with a score of 40:38 in the 2005 season.
Among other events in beach volleyball, we note the golden double of Russian pairs at the European Youth Championships in Portugal. Here the winners were representatives of the capital's FRPV-ShVSM "Izmailovo" Ksenia Dabizha - Olga Sorokina and students of the Krasnodar KSP for PVS Vasily Andrianov - Vladislav Kiriyenko.