Swiss and Ukrainians at the top of the podium in Spiez
Futures in Europe
Led by victories from teams of hosts Switzerland and Ukraine, European beach volleyball duos collected five of the six medals in play at this week’s Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Spiez Futures, which came to an end on Sunday.
While Marco Krattiger and Florian Breer secured the men’s title to please the fans that were at the picturesque Spiezer Bucht, Diana Lunina and Tetiana Lazarenko confirmed their excellent form with their victory in the women’s event.
Hosts Switzerland sent their top men’s teams to the tournament in Spiez and they didn’t disappoint, with Krattiger and Breer battling compatriots Quentin Métral and Yves Haussener in the gold medal match. The second-seeded were in top form and took the title with a 2-0 (21-16, 21-19) victory.
It was the first international title for the 28-year-old Krattiger and the 24-year-old Breer, who became partners in 2021 and were playing a Futures tournament for the first time in their careers.
Florian Breer“This victory means a lot for us. We had some struggles at the start of the season because of injuries and now I feel like we’ve been able to gain momentum in front of our home fans. We fought until the end and it was great that we managed to win. Our Swiss opponents are really good friends and the fact that we both made it to the final shows that the two teams had great success this week.”
Swiss Beach Volleyball Player
Polish Jedrzej Brozyniak and Piotr Janiak prevailed in the all-European bronze medal match in Spiez and topped Finnish Jyrki Nurminen and Santeri Siren in two sets (21-14, 21-15) to make their third-straight podium appearance at Futures events, following a second-place finish at last year’s event in Warsaw and a third-place in Budapest, also in 2022.
The women’s tournament ended with a strong comeback in the gold medal match as Lunina and Lazarenko recovered from a first-set loss to Czechs Michaela Brinkova and Karin Zolnercikova to win in the tie-breaker (16-21, 21-9, 15-10) and top the podium.
This was just the second Futures event for the 30-year-old Lunina and the 19-year-old Lazarenko, who’s the reigning U21 world champion and U20 European champion. The two joined forces this season and took silver at the Madrid Futures, a few weeks ago.
Australians Georgia Johnson and Jasmine Fleming prevented a full European podium sweep by defeating Germans Nele Schmitt and Paula Schurhlolz by forfeit in the bronze medal match.
The French city of Lille will be the next stop of the Beach Pro Tour Futures in Europe. The tournament there will be held next week, from Thursday to Sunday.
The Beach Pro Tour Futures events in Europe are run by the CEV in close cooperation with Volleyball World and provide teams from the continent with several opportunities to compete and gain valuable ranking points during the Olympic qualification period for the Paris 2024 Games.