Translated material
Bridge to Europe
In Sochi, the participants of the Russian Championship will be replaced by the best couples of the continent
The final competitions of the Russian beach volleyball championship were held on Sochi's Riviera beach. But the celebration of local flying ball fans and sports-interested vacationers is not over. A fundamentally new tournament under the auspices of the Continental Volleyball Federation (CVF) - Masters Final - starts here on Friday. Eight of the strongest men's and women's pairs from the Old World, who scored the most points at the stages of the Eurotour 2008, will perform.At the recent Olympics in Beijing, Russia was represented by two pairs - 2007 World Championship silver medal winners Igor Kolodinsky - Dmitry Barsuk and 2006 European champions Natalya Uryadova and Alexandra Shiryaeva. These teams were the favorites of the Russian final. However, the forecasts were half unfulfilled. If representatives of Belgorod Bars and Bazuka confirmed their status by defeating Ruslan Dayanov and Yuri Bogatov in two games in the decisive match, then Uryadova and Shiryaeva (all from Mytishchi) lost in a dramatic fight to the 2008 European champions among youth (age category U-23) Maria Bratkova and Evgenia Ukolova (Vladivostok) - 17:21, 21:16, 10:15.
It should be noted that not everyone made it to the final tournament of the national championship. The selection was carried out based on the results of the previous stages of the Russian Championship, which took place in Maykop, Anapa, Mytishchi, Moscow, Kaliningrad region, St. Petersburg and Belgorod. Depending on the place taken, participants received credit points. Since players can change partners during the season for various reasons, for a more fair ranking, the All-Russian Volleyball Federation maintains an individual classification. Its leaders approached the Sochi finals: Galina Boyko (Vladivostok), who usually performs in tandem with Anna Markova, and Belgorod residents Roman Arkaev - Alexander Likholetov, who together played all seven previous stages and won two titles.
However, the organizers had a differentiated approach to the use of the rating. It is clear that couples competing at the stages of the World Tour and EuroTour cannot always combine their travels with competitions on the domestic calendar. Therefore, couples representing our country at international tournaments were allowed into Sochi without taking into account their Russian rating.
The sporting dream of Shiryaeva and Uryadova was to participate in the Olympics. In Beijing, the girls were unable to advance from the group, but there is nothing to blame them for - all three meetings were lost in a tiebreaker, and the Russians lost minimally to the very strong Brazilian pair Ana Paula - Larissa (13:15 in the third set). While the best “beach girls” of the country at that time were preparing for the Games and playing in Beijing, their younger colleagues were successfully campaigning to collect continental “gold” in championships of various age categories. First, Bratkova and Ukolova distinguished themselves in the Portuguese Espinho (U-23). Then Evgenia, teaming up with Markova, won the U-20 championship at the Italian resort of San Salvo. And finally, at the very end of the summer, Irina Chaika and Ekaterina Karapishchenko (Krasnodar) scored a Russian hat-trick, rising to the highest level of the junior (U-18) European Championship in Loutraki (Greece).
So the defeat of Uryadova - Shiryaeva from Bratkova - Ukolova is to some extent symbolic. The time has come to pass the baton to a new generation. Still, Shiryaeva’s hegemony clearly dragged on, because she became a prize-winner of the Russian Championship 13 (!) years ago.
The Sochi Masters Final is ahead. The organizers do not hide the fact that they partly copied the tournament model from tennis and the competition formula is reminiscent of the men's Masters Cup or the women's WTA Championship. The eight best couples of the season will be divided into two quartets, will play in one round, and then the semi-finals and final will take place.
Although the ranking points from the weekend's EuroTour stage in Blackpool (UK) are still being calculated, it is already clear that women's pairs from Germany, Norway, Belgium, Austria, Greece, Holland and Latvia have received the right to play in Sochi. Russia, as the organizing country, was guaranteed a place, but the Bratkov-Ukolova pair is in the top 8 according to the rating. For men, in the main tournament of the season, two pairs from Germany, the Dutch, Austrians, Poles, Swiss, Spaniards and Kolodinsky - Badger, are scheduled to play.