Russia avoid huge upset on day one of Continental Cup Final

One of the two golden matches in the women’s eighthfinals of the CEV Continental Cup Final in the Hague came from where it was probably least expected. Considered as the clear underdogs in Wednesday’s clash with Russia, Cyprus surprisingly pushed their powerful opponents to a deciding third rubber before conceding.

In a hard-fought first rubber, Cyprus’s Erika Nystrom & Daria Gusarova lost in straight sets to Russia’s Ksenia Dabizha & Daria Rudykh, but did so by the narrowest of margins in each of the sets, 0-2 (19-21, 19-21). In the second rubber, Mariota Angelopoulou & Zoi Konstantopoulou dropped the first sensation of the tournament by producing a 2-0 (21-16, 22-20) upset of Russian prodigies Mariia Bocharova & Maria Voronina. In the golden match, however, Dabizha & Rudykh were merciless on the way to a 2-0 (21-14, 21-8) blowout of Angelopoulou & Konstantopoulou to secure advancement to Thursday’s quarterfinals.

Poland and Czechia also had to resolve their first-round tie with a golden match, in which Kinga Wojtasik & Katarzyna Kociolek lived up to the expectations and mastered a 2-0 (21-12, 21-16) win over their Czech rivals Michaela Kubickova & Michala Kvapilova.

Without resorting to golden matches, Austria, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Ukraine swiftly reached the last eight by outplaying Slovenia, Lithuania, Estonia, France, Finland and Italy, respectively, although some rubbers did get decided in tie-breaker sets.