FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour - Antalya Open - Players challenge the storm

ANTALYA OPEN

Taru  Lahti (FIN) in yellow challenging the ball in the rain against Ana Gallay (ARG)

(photo : FIVB)

Marta Menegatti and Viki Orsi Toth reached their third final four in a row on a very rainy and stormy Friday at the FIVB World Tour Antalya Open. The second seeded Italians defeated two German teams to get to the semifinal: Teresa Mersmann and Isabel Schneider (21-16, 21-14) and Kim Behrens and Anni Schumacher (21-13, 21-15). 

In the semifinal they will play Argentina’s third seeded Ana Gallay and Georgina Klug who knocked out French pair Laura Longuet and Alexandra Jupiter (19-21, 21-14, 15-13) and Finland’s Taru Lahti and Riikka Lehtonen (21-17, 21-19) on Friday. 

Menegatti and Orsi Toth, who booked nothing but straight wins so far in Antalya, claimed gold and bronze in their last two World Tour events in Sochi and Puerto Vallarta and are leading the series against the Argentineans 2-0. Gallay and Klug just recently won their first medal; silver at the Xiamen Open. 

USA vs Czech Republic

The other semifinal features two teams who have reached only their first final four; USA’s Jennifer Kessy and Emily Day and Czech pair Marketa Slukova and Barbora Hermannova. Though both 2012 Olympic silver medallist Kessy and Slukova individually won plenty of medals before. 

Sixth seeded Kessy and Day eliminated Russian pair Evgenia Ukolova and Ekaterina Birlova (21-16, 18-21, 15-13) in the morning before they met up with Austria’s Stefanie Schwaiger and Barbara Hansel in the middle of a tropical storm. The rain and wind turned the centre court into a battlefield, on which the US team prevailed in two sets (21-16, 21-13)

(Source : FIVB)