Uba athletes with their successful play brought a remarkable revival to the usual course of the Russian Championship. Photo: VFW Press Service
In general, the sporting results of the tournament are logical. The “gold” goes to the couples that dominated this entire long season: previously 15 stages of the National Open Championship and three competitions within the Russian Cup were held. In Volya Grad, Oleg Stoyanovsky – Ilya Leshukov (Fakel, Novy Urengoy), Nadezhda Makroguzova – Svetlana Kholomina (MVK Dynamo Moscow) climbed to the top step of the podium. All four participate in the Tokyo Olympics and two years ago in Japan, Stoyanovsky, playing alongside Vyacheslav Krasilnikov, won silver.
Cubans Jorge Alayo and Noslen Díaz took third place at the end of August in the Kazan phase, but the competition there was less than in the final phase of the tournament in the Krasnodar region. Now, in the semifinals, the couple from Freedom Island forced a fight between Stoyanovsky and Leshukov (21:16, 7:21, 8:15), and in the match for bronze the guests defeated Alexey Arkhipov and Dmitry Veretyuk from VC “Obninsk” – 24:22, 21:12.
Brazil delegated a strong men’s team. Álvaro Filho’s collection includes the “silver” from the World Championship; He is the winner of three personal awards from the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) in various categories based on the results of the beach seasons. His partner Simón Barbosa has won World Tour stages twice. However, the South Americans only reached the quarterfinals, where they were eliminated by Arkhipov and Veretyuk.
In the women’s tournament, it is worth highlighting the return of the 2018 Youth Olympic Games champion, María Bocharova, after a break of more than a year. She was disqualified for systematically violating the sports regime. The Russian Volleyball Federation (VFV) was forced to make a difficult decision, despite all of Maria’s titles. As it turned out, her long downtime did not affect Bocharova’s condition. She in a duet with Maria Egorova (nee Voronina) she managed to take second place.
