Laciga brothers stay on course in Austria
Swiss beach volleyball stars, Paul and Martin Laciga, are through to the second round of the SFr855,000 ($500,000) World Beach Volleyball Championships in Klagenfurt, Austria.
The number three seeds dispatched Italy’s Ricardo Lione and “Eugio” Amore in three sets, 21-14, 17-21, 15-3.
The brothers, who entered the tournament fresh from a second place finish at last week’s Portugal Open in Espinho, have high hopes of improving on the silver medal they won at the 1999 world championships in Marseille.
Sadly the tournament is over for two other Swiss pairings. Sascha Heyer and Markus Egger almost caused one of the upsets of the championships when they took on the number two seeds, Brazil’s Emanuel Rego and “Tande” Ramos.
The Swiss pairing narrowly lost the first set 24-26, before stunning the Brazilians and taking the second set 21-15. The deciding set was a real ding-dong affair with both teams having chances to win the tie. The Swiss narrowly lost out 26-28 after one hour and 19 minutes of nail-biting action.
Stefan Kobel and Patrick Heuscher also missed out after coming up against the Russian pairing of Sergei Ermishin and Mikhail Kouchnerev in what was a tightly contested match. The Swiss went down losing in three sets, 21-18, 11-21, 11-15, in just under an hour.
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