EMWTC 2018: Russia starts with victories on day 1
On February 13, the European Men’s and Women’s Team Championships got underway in Kazan. Despite the evening opening ceremony of the tournament, the group stage kicked off early in the morning. The main outcome of the first competition day for the Russian fans is that both the men’s and women’s national teams came out victorious in their first matches of the event.
The first eight EMWTC games – six women’s and two men’s – were scheduled for 10.00 (Moscow time). The women’s team of Denmark faced no problem in the match against the opponents from Sweden (4-1), the Ukraine and England whitewashed Ireland and Norway respectively. The next three games were a tough fight, but the winners took one-point lead over the losers: the teams of Spain, Slovakia and Poland celebrated the score of 3-2. In the men’s event, Azerbaijan had no chance against Luxemburg (4-1), and Germany did not let Iceland score a single point.
Russia started its journey in these competitions in one of the nine matches that were played in the second half of the morning session. The men’s team beat Team Bulgaria with confidence, earning four points out of possible five. Only one point was presented to the Bulgarians by Anatoliy Yartsev, who was very dissatisfied with himself after the duel against Dimitar Yanakiev was over. “I’m very disappointed with the result of the game. It was a good start, I felt the game, speed and the shuttlecock, but then I lost concentration and failed to handle pressure and responsibility to the team members rather than to deal with any technical or tactical elements. When you lose five-six points in succession, you begin to evaluate what’s going wrong and try to reverse the situation. But you fail to do that. I just worked myself up, and my mindset decided the battle,” the athlete noted.
The opponents of the Russian team in the group stage met in the concurrent game. The Spanish beat Belgium with the score 4-1. The women’s Team Greenland lost 0-5 to Belarus in their first-ever match of the European Championships. The Ukrainian men’s team won against the French with the same score. The Portuguese defeated the Czech. In the women’s tournament, the Germany vs Lithuania match concluded with the win of the Germans. The toughest game of the afternoon programme was played by the female athletes from Israel and Iceland. The former players were better than their opponents by one point (3-2).
After the official opening ceremony of the championships, 18 teams played their games on courts of the Gymnastics Centre. Obviously, Court 1 drew the spectators’ attention because the Russian women’s team was competing against the players from Turkey. Evgeniya Kosetskaya of Russia commenced the match. The Russian leader got the upper hand over Neslihan Yigit in two sets. “I played well. I thought it’d have been worse. After all, this is the first game. It was very important to win a point because it was psychologically hard. I played quite well, I think. But I hope it will be even better further on,” the Russian commented on her play.
After this success, something went wrong. Natalia Perminova took the lead in her game, but lost two sets to her rival. Giving a good fight in the second game, Elena Komendrovskaja was defeated by Ozge Bayrak. The only thing the Russian fans could hope for was the doubles. Anastasia Chervyakova and Olga Morozova rebalanced the position in the most difficult match: the Russians overcame their opponents in three games and re-established balance in the match. Then everything depended on Alina Davletova and Ekaterina Bolotova. They were expected to play in a decisive match against pair Yigit/Bayrak. The Russian girls won the first game of the most important match (21-12), but the Turkish players gained the upper hand in the second game. In the third game, the Russians pulled themselves together and again scored 21-12. This was a chic victory in the initial match of the domestic European Championships.
In another match of the same group, Team Latvia had no chance against the Estonian girls (5-0). The Danish men’s team beat Israel more than confidently. The final score was 5-0. But the players from Israel could not win a single game. In the men’s event, the score for Croatia vs Ireland was 1-4, the scores for England vs Hungary and Slovakia vs Greenland were 5-0. However, there was a moment in the latter match, that would definitely go down in history, when Team Greenland led by Bror Madsen and Taatsiannguaq Pedersen managed to pull out a win in the set. Austria defeated Lithuania, Poland got the better of the Italian team.
The match Bulgaria vs France turned out to be very tough. The Bulgarian female players took the lead, but the French caught up with the opponents. In the end, in the lead-up to the final doubles match, the table showed 2-2. Anyway, the girls from Bulgaria imposed pressure on Team France and earned their first victory at the Championships.