Maciej Kosiak and Maciej Rudol won the FIVB Beach Volleyball U23 World Championships on Sunday in front of a huge home crowd. The two Maciejs beat Norway’s Lars Fredrik Tvinde and Hendrik Nikolai Mol 2-1 (25-23, 18-21, 15-12) in a tight game with great rallies and powerful spikes.
“It’s hard to say something more than that we are so incredibly happy”, said Kosiak right after the match. “The spectators were just amazing. They helped us a lot in the whole tournament and today they did a great job. It’s something special to have the possibility of winning a world championship title in front of our wonderful fans.”
The first set of the final was point-by-point. The Norwegians had set points at 20-19 and 21-20, but it was Poland who closed it at their third set point: 25-23. Tvinde and Mol came back strong in the second set with fast and hard attacks and had their first chance to claim the set at 20-15. The Polish warded off three set points, but after a Norwegian time-out the match went into a tie-break after all: 21-18. Kosiak and Rudol took the lead from 5-5 in the third and kept on making their side-outs. At 13-12 Rudol hit a hard spike down the line and right after that also scored the winning point with a kill block.
“It was hard, we got better and better every match, but our final opponent was one of the best teams in the whole tournament”, said the tall blocker. “We knew that Norway plays very good and difficult Volleyball and we were prepared for that. The final was really exciting and tough, but we played better, that’s it.”
The Norwegians added a second silver to their second place from last year’s CEV U22 European Championship. “We had a pretty stable side-out, but we could not get the points”, Tvinde said. “The block and defence was not so good this time. To see it in a big perspective, it’s perfect”, he reflected. “We did a really nice tournament and silver is not so bad.”
Brazil’s Allison Cittadin Francioni and Gustavo Albrecht Carvalhaes were set on another gold medal after winning the U21 World Championships last year, but had to settle for the bronze. After losing to Kosiak and Rudol in the semis, they defeated Germany’s Bennet and David Poniewaz 2-0 (21-13, 21-15) for third place. The German twins were no match for the Brazilians, who were determined to get at least the bronze medal.