Julius Thole / Clemens Wickler Germany (1) def. Aleksandrs Samoilovs / Janis Smedins Latvia (5) 17-21, 21-12, 15-12 (47)
Julius Thole, Germany - “It’s really awesome. I’m so tired, so many emotions, so many people I know and it’s just Thursday and there are so many people already. We are happy we got the chance to play here and then we make this development, we couldn’t expect that. We knew before (the Finals) if we play our best Beach Volleyball, it’s hard to win against us. Of course, we didn’t expect that we would beat these three top teams, the level of every team is so close to each other. Winning three games here, for sure one of the main reasons is the crowd who helps us a lot and makes us fight. I’m already looking forward to the next game. I will try to not think about (winning the pool). We are enjoying the crowd, the matches, we see it as a payoff for our good season.
Janis Smedins, Latvia - “It’s a good tournament, we just couldn’t show our best here. You fight, and you lose three matches in the third set but still we had some good moments.” (On the emerging young European teams): “If you see the blockers, the blockers are more than 2 meters and Anders Mol, he’s jumping like crazy, putting some crazy blocks, yes, of course it’s hard to play against those kinds of huge blocks. And, the Czechs, they are improving every year, especially this year and already last year they started to play well but this year especially. The Norwegians, the Russian guys also are starting to get medals. They are coming in and trying to push the old guys out.”