Many new faces got a chance to compete in the Main Draw of the Xiamen Open last weekend. The Chinese city offered the first of an international series of Open events running from October till the middle of December to mark the closure of the colorful 2014 season.
The lower prize factor, the long travel to China, which already hosted the first two season events in Fuzhou and Shanghai respectively, plus the smaller amount of World Ranking points rebuffed most of the Tour’s stars and favorites. Opportunities like this are surely to be exploited by some less known teams that have been patiently waiting to reach the medals. And even if the same situation might repeat in any of the remaining Opens, there are still going to be dramatic games and good beach volleyball like the competitors at Xiamen showed us.
On the podium on Saturday we saw two recent indoor volleyball players who enjoy some quality time on the beach as well. The former French national team libero Edouard Rowlandson, 26, added another prestigious page to his volleyball career chapters by winning the gold in China with his partner Youssef Krou, 25, who is a newbie at the World Tour. The Frenchmen overcame in an exhausting final (22-20, 19-21, 15-12) the Spaniards Marco Francisco Alfredo and Christian García. The silver medalists, whose partnership started back in 2011, achieved their best World Tour finish.
“In the season this is the third time we played a French team and the other times we won, but each match is different. They played really well,” said García.
“We started the season quite late and we’re a completely new team so for us there’s a lot of work behind it and a lot of investment. It makes us want to work even harder for next year and the year after to go to the Olympics,” said Rowlandson.
The bronze medals also went in European hands. The newly formed Russian duo Barsouk-Lyamin seized a quick 2-0 (21-18, 21-15) win over USA’s Brunner-Mayer. Whereas Dmitry Barsouk is not a new name in the world of beach volleyball, his new partner Nikita Lyamin was still competing professionally indoors for Guberniya Nizhny Novgorod last season. Barsouk, a true beach volleyball guide with international experience since 1999, is mostly known for his successful partnership with Igor Kolodinsky, who returned to the game indoors back in 2010 and plays now in the Russian Superleague. Hence, the 34-year old Barsouk has been struggling to regain momentum and eventually found someone who helped him step back on the World Tour podium for the first time in five years. The block specialist Lyamin, on the other side, seems to have few worries changing the hall floor to sand.
“We were sure that we would win, we were not nervous, everything was under control. After the first set, after I saw my young partner felt good and after a few balls I said OK, we will win this match and everything will be good. We blocked really well, we won five blocks in this game. It’s a good result for the two sets, so the block is one of our strongest points,” said Barsouk.
Theodore Brunner, another recent indoor professional, and his compatriot John Mayer left the Xiamen final four empty-handed. The blocker Brunner, however, already tasted a “podium” flavour as he and his veteran partner Todd Rogers won bronze at the home Grand Slam in Long Beach, California.
Pictures: FIVB
