European Princes and Princesses crowned in Baden

18.05.2021 - Baden

The new Kings and Queens of European beach volleyball will be crowned in August at the A1 CEV European Championships Vienna 2021, but the host country of the continent’s premier tournament got to have a small sample of what’s to come with the U22 European Championships in Baden last weekend.

The top junior beach volleyball teams of the continent gathered in the city located south of Vienna for the four-day competition that proclaimed Swedish David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig and Russians Mariia Bocharova and Maria Voronina as the Princes and Princesses of the continent.

The reigning Youth Olympics champions, the 19-year-old Ahman and Hellvig completed their trifecta of age-group European Championships in great fashion as they went the entire tournament without dropping a set until they downed Latvia’s Arturs Rinkevics and Ardis Bedritis 2-0 (21-18, 21-16) in the final.

The two, who are known for their eye-catching playing style which includes jump sets and a lot of pace, had won the U18 and U20 European Championships in 2018 and 2020 respectively and are expected to appear in the senior version of the tournament for the first time this summer in Vienna.

Russians Alexey Gusev and Pavel Shustrov, who entered the tournament as the back-to-back defending champions, finished third after they defeated Poland’s Milosz Kruk and Mikolaj Miszczuk also in straight sets (21-15, 21-18).

The women’s tournament awarded an even more dominant team in Europe’s age-group tournaments as Bocharova, 19, and Voronina, 21, won a title in the continent together for the seventh time – they’re now three-time U20 and two-time U18 and U22 champions.

The two, who are also Youth Olympics and U19 world champions, came out on the right side of the hard-fought, three-set (22-24, 21-18, 15-12) gold medal match against the Netherlands’ Raisa Schoon and Emi van Driel to regain the title they had first claimed in 2019.

Bocharova and Voronina have appeared in the last three editions of the EuroBeachVolley and secured a top ten finish in the 2019 tournament, when they ranked ninth. They now have different partners in senior events with Bocharova pairing with Aleksandra Ganenko while Voronina plays with Anastasiia Frolova but both of them have a chance of competing in Vienna in less than three months.

The bronze medal went to 17-year-old Ukrainians Anhelina Khmil and Tetiana Lazarenko, who upset reigning U20 European champions Varvara Brailko and Anete Namike of Latvia 2-1 (21-16, 17-21, 15-11) to finish at the podium.

The Princes and Princesses of Europe are already known. It will soon be time to find out who the Kings and Queens are.