Laciga brothers triumph over Russian team
Switzerland's beach volleyball stars, Paul and Martin Laciga, have defeated one of the Russian teams 2-0 at the World Beach Volleyball Championships in Austria. Saturday's victory in Klagenfurt opens the way for the quarter final, when the Lacigas will face Norway's Andre Kjemperud and teammate Vegard Hoidalin.
The Laciga prodigies defeated the Russians Sergey Ermishin and Mikhail Kouchnerev on the score of 21-19, 21-14.
On Friday, the Lacigas dispatched Italy’s Ricardo Lione and “Eugio” Amore in three sets, 21-14, 17-21,15-3.
The number three seeds, 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. Sasha 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. However, they narrowly lost out 26-28 in the final set.
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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