Iranian beach volleyball pair won a silver medal at the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Games in Aydin, Turkey, on Sunday.
The pair Rahim Raoufi and Abolhamed Mirza-Ali faced Stefan Basta and Lazar Kolaric of Serbia in the final game and submitted to a 2-1 loss to take silver, Iran Volleyball Federation reported on its Persian website.
Iranians had hopes for a gold but had to settle for silver, which is their second medal as a duo, after the bronze they claimed in Satun, Malaysia, last month. Raoufi has one more silver and one more bronze in his record but with a different partner.
Raoufi and Mirza-Ali, who had impressed throughout the previous stages of the competition, won the first set of the final match 21-16 and were two points ahead of their opponents near the end of the second set 20-18.
“We held a close competition against the Serbs,” Raoufi said. “Our rivals won a silver medal in the Swiss Three Star World Tour, which means they were technically superior.”
“We won the first set but failed to repeat the result in the next periods, despite our best efforts, the Serbs won the games with their nose in front,” he added.
However, Basta and Kolaric were able to fight their way back and eventually won the second set 25-23. The tie-breaker was a dramatic affair where the Serbs came back to emerge victorious at 16-14.
The Aydin bronze went to Russia’s Ruslan Bykanov and Maksim Hudyakov. This was the first medal on the World Tour for either of them.
The winning Serbian pair received $1,000 in prize money and Iranians got $700. Russian as the third team took $500.
FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour is the worldwide professional beach volleyball tour for both men and women organized by the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB). The tour for men was introduced in 1989 while the women first competed in 1992.
Winning the world tour is considered one of the highest honors in international beach volleyball, surpassed only by the World Championships, and the beach volleyball tournament in the Summer Olympics.
