Walkenhorst/Winter Beat Horl/Winter for Kish Island Bronze Medal

Kish Island, Iran, February 24, 2018 – Germany’s Alexander Walkenhorst/Sven Winter bagged the bronze medal in the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour MICA Mall Kish Island 3-star with a 2-0 (21-18, 21-11) win over Austria’s Julian Horl/Tobias Winter at the Kish Marine Recreation Sports Complex on Saturday.
Walkenhorst/Winter’s stint at the Kish Island 3-star is their first FIVB World Tour event together. The bronze medal is Winter’s first World Tour medal and Walkenhorst’s second, following his silver medal finish at Anapa in 2013.
“It is very nice to get a World Tour medal, especially for me, I am just 19 years old,” Winter said. “I don’t think so many guys my age can say that. So I am very happy about that.
“We came to qualification very nervous and it was pretty hard to get in the mood for our first knockout games in the season. When we finally got through the qualification matches we got better and better until the quarterfinals. We didn’t play well so much today but in the end we still got the bronze.”
Both pairs had a sluggish start but Walkenhorst’s intimidating presence at the net and Winter’s great service and attack game gave the German side the momentum to take the opening set. By the second set, the German pair just got better in executing their plays that helped build a commanding 21-11 second set win.
“Our block defence improved a lot,” Walkenhorst said. We had big problems when we practiced with the Latvian teams in Egypt before this tournament, but we finally got our rhythm and we are getting better and better.
“I hope we can play more stable than we did in this tournament because we have been playing on a high-level but only for a short period. If we can fix this then we are hard to beat for sure.”