After eight attempts, Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak have finally won their first continental medal as the Polish stars took bronze at the A1 CEV EuroBeachVolley Vienna 2021 presented by Swatch on Sunday.
Partners since 2009, the 29-year-old Polish improved from their fourth-place finish in 2019 by stepping on the podium in the Austrian capital after they downed Dutch Olympic medalists Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen of the Netherlands in straight sets (21-14, 21-19) at the Red Bull Beach Arena.
“This medal means so much for us,” Losiak commented. “We’ve been trying to get it for so long and I’m glad we finally made it. It was difficult. We lost our semifinal earlier today we felt like we gave up on the second set and they destroyed us. It wasn’t easy to get our minds right again but we did it. Dreams come true."
Kantor and Losiak, who represented their country in two Olympics – Rio 2016and Tokyo 2020-, became just the second men’s team from Poland to claim an EuroBeachVolley medal, repeating the results Grzegorz Fijalek and Mariusz Prudel achieved in 2013 and 2016. They finished in the top ten in each of the nine occasions they competed together in the tournament, with the first dating back to 2012.
“Vienna will now be a special place for us,” Kantor added. “It’s our first medal in the EuroBeachVolley and to win it in this beautiful stadium with such a fantastic atmosphere, it’s really remarkable.”
Norway’s Anders Mol and Christian Sørum and the Netherlands’ Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot will play at the 2021 EuroBeachVolley gold medal match later on Sunday at the Red Bull Beach Arena.
