The Brazilians Arthur Diego Mariano Lanci and George Souto Maior Wanderley had a perfect week at the FIVB U19 World Championship in Porto, Portugal, and grabbed the gold medals with a perfect 9-0 win-loss record.
The Portuguese Atlantic coast was stage of the U19 World Championships for a second year in a row. After a European domination in 2013, Brazil broke the habit and took the title to South America.
In the final on Sunday Arthur-George Wanderley met surprising opponents. Illia Kovalov and Oleh Plotnytskiy from Ukraine had a much more challenging route to the last game of the program. The Ukrainians finished on fourth position in the preliminary Pool E (each pool consisted of six teams), making it to the second round by a whisker. At the beginning of the week Kovalov-Plotnytskiy lost to Lysikowski-Jetke (Poland), Ivanov-Kalchev (Bulgaria) and Danny-Padilla (Puerto Rico) and it was thanks to the two victories over the eventually eliminated Fathers-Gray (Australia) and Barauskis-Bartkus (Lithuania) that sealed the next round tickets for the future vice-champions.
Kovalov-Plotnitskiy were worthy opponents of Arthur-George Wanderley in the final. A series of mistakes on both sides of the net marked an interesting and balanced game that had to be decided in a tie-break. The Brazilians were more concentrated and celebrated in the end (21-18, 21-23, 15-11).
“I don’t know what to think of this”, said the 17-year old George Wanderley. “But it is a really good feeling. To be the number one team in the world. I have no words for it.”
Venezuela’s Tigrito Gomez and Peter Hernandez finished their almost perfect Portuguese campaign with a bronze decoration. The 9th-seeded tandem lost only once throughout the week, in the semifinal against the future winners from Brazil (18-21, 18-21), and totally deserved a successful Sunday. A win in straight sets (21-18, 21-19) versus Holland’s Jasper Bouter and Tom van Steenis sent the last pair of medals to South America.
Pictures: FIVB
