Vaduz, Liechtenstein, August 12, 2018 – Taras Myskiv and Valeriy Samoday did it again! The Russian pair repeated their feat from Ljubljana last week and went all the way from the qualifications to the top of the men’s podium at the Vaduz one-star stop on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour. Due to changing his nationality, Samoday had been absent from the World Tour since 2013, but he and Myskiv have been impeccable since his return last week and won gold at both their appearances so far.
Fifth-seeded Florian Breer and Yves Haussener claimed the silver medals. For the Swiss pair, 2014 U17 world champions and 2016 U19 World Championship runners-up, this is also the second podium finish on the World Tour after their bronze from Ljubljana a week ago.
Finishing third at Vaduz, sixth-seeded Sergiy Popov and Vladyslav Iemelianchyk of Ukraine claimed their second World Tour medal after their Porec gold last month. Together with Vaduz champ Samoday, Popov has two Age Category World Championship titles to his name.
The men’s podium at Vaduz
On Sunday, 10th-seeded Myskiv and Samoday had to play some big sets on the way to the title. In both their semifinal and the final, the first set went deep into overtime and finished after as many as 60 rallies.
The Russians started the day with a 2-0 (31-29, 21-14) semifinal win over Samoday’s former long-time partner Popov and Iemelianchyk. However, in the gold medal match in front of a full house of over a thousand spectators, Myskiv and Samoday had to come back from a one-set deficit against Breer and Haussener to triumph with a 2-1 (29-31, 21-17, 15-11) victory.
“We are obviously extremely happy to win our second tournament in two weeks! We will continue to work hard in order to keep improving each day,” the winners said.
Popov and Iemelianchyk rebounded with a 2-0 (21-12, 21-16) shutout of Poland’s Mateusz Paszkowski and Mateusz Lysikowski in the bronze medal match, which lasted only 31 minutes.
The Poles had been more competitive in their semifinal encounter with the Swiss team earlier on Sunday, but lost both sets by the narrowest of margins. Breer and Haussener overcame the resistance of Paszkowski and Lysikowski to claim a 2-0 (24-22, 21-19) win and advance to the final.
“It definitely was not our best game but we made fewer mistakes than the Poles did,” Breer and Haussener commented. “We will try to improve our game for the final.”
After the tournament was over, Philippe Schuermann, president of the Liechtenstein Volleyball Federation, sounded elated: “We are extremely happy, especially since we could host an FIVB World Tour event and this raised the international profile of our tournament even further. The level is higher and we had teams from all over the world competing here, in Vaduz.”