Translated material
Hourglass
The countdown for Beijing Olympic qualifying begins in Shanghai
Last weekend, the first stage of the 2007 World Tour in beach volleyball ended, at the same time the year and a half Olympic selection for the Beijing Summer Games began. The results of the men's competition in Shanghai pleasantly surprised Russian fans of this sport and inspire great optimism about the prospects of our representation in the main tournament of the four years. The recently created pair Igor Kolodinsky (Belgorod) - Dmitry Barsuk (Krasnodar) finished in fourth place. Our beachgoers have not achieved such success for six years.24 men's and women's couples will each receive trips to Beijing. China is guaranteed one place each, that is, if they perform well in the qualifying round, the hosts can nominate no more than three teams to the Olympics. The quota for all other countries is a maximum of two tandems. Ranking points are awarded at all World Series tournaments this season and until July 20, 2008. By the way, the last qualifying competition will be the Russian stage, which is extremely important for our teams. In total, including the July 2007 World Championships in Switzerland, there are more than 30 tournaments in Europe, Asia, North and South America, of which each couple will count the eight best results.
Barsuk and Kolodinsky created a serious start in Shanghai, earning 420 points at once. This figure is approximately equal to the amount of points that can be obtained in four tournaments by winning one or two matches in the main draw. In beach games, as a rule, they play according to the playoff system up to two defeats. Moreover, getting into the number of 24 participants exempt from qualification is also very difficult. For this purpose, the International Volleyball Federation uses a rapidly changing technical ranking, which takes into account the four best results from the last five tournaments held (provided that they took place no more than a year ago). Therefore, any series of failures can sharply drop a team into the ranks of the qualifiers, from where it is problematic to get out given the existing competition. Our Belgorod couple, with their excellent play in Shanghai, ensured that they got into the main draw in about the next five stages, and each time this is a guaranteed 60 points in the Olympic rating.
The Athens Olympics took place without our scourge masters. Next season, the leadership of the sport was entrusted to Gennady Shipulin, a classical volleyball specialist, former head coach of the Russian men's national team and long-term mentor of Lokomotiv-Belogorye Belgorod. Since then, tremendous progress has been made. Natalya Uryadova and Alexandra Shiryaeva became European champions last year, and the former was also recognized as the best player on the continent at the end of the entire season. At the same time, the search for optimal combinations in male duets continued. At the end of last year, Badger’s alliance with Roman Arkaev ceased to exist, and Dmitry began performing together with Kolodinsky. Igor, having previously played with Leonid Kalinin without much success, became the only volleyball player on the World Tour who managed to execute a serve at a speed above the grandmaster three-digit mark - 106 km/h, thanks to which Kolodinsky became the owner of a special FIVB prize.
The debut of the new pair Kolodinsky - Badger created a real sensation. At the autumn stage in Brazil, the Russians, starting with qualification, won two victories in a row over the hosts - the undisputed trendsetters in the beach world. A high ninth place and 240 rating points allowed our players to open the 2007 World Tour in Shanghai from the main draw. Having lost here in the second round to the most titled beach swimmer in the world, Brazilian Emmanuel Rego (60 tournament victories) and Ricardo Santos, the Russians ended up in the so-called losers’ bracket and won five matches in a row. The losers were two couples from Canada, an Argentinean, Norwegian and Chinese tandem. Having secured their place in the quartet of the strongest, Igor and Dmitry could not cope with the future winners of the stage, Brazilians Harley Marques - Pedro Salgado (this was the third fight of the Russians that day), and in the meeting for bronze, despite decent resistance, they could not take superior to the Swiss Patrick Heuscher and Sascha Heyer.
In the final classification, below the Russians were the Olympic champions of Athens Emmanuel - Ricardo, and the current holders of European “gold” Julius Brink - Christoph Dieckmann (Germany), and the 2001 World Cup winners, the Argentines Mariano Barazetti - Martin Conde, defeated by ours in personal meeting.
Salgado became the 20th Brazilian to win stages of the World Tour (a total of 192 competitions since 1987). A purely Brazilian final was played for the 54th time. In beach volleyball, there is a fairly well-established hegemony of the South Americans, who periodically compete with players from the USA, Germany, Switzerland and Norway. Judging by the pace at which the Kolodinsky-Badger pair is progressing, Russia will soon be included in this number.
Two more of our couples also played in Shanghai. Arkaev and 20-year-old Muscovite Yuri Bogatov suffered two defeats and were classified in 25th place, Uryadova and Shiryaeva won one match out of three, ultimately finishing in 17th position.