By Ivan Rafalsky
The women were the first to be knocked out of the struggle. Tatiana Petkevich’s trainees set off to Germany well remembering their bronze medals at a similar tournament in 2006. Unfortunately, they failed to repeat their success. In the final match of the group stage, which primarily determined our chances, our team lost to Hungary and were placed only fifth in their group, enabling them to climb no higher than 13th position.
The men advanced further. At the group stage, Vladimir Samsonov, Yevgeny Shchetinin and Pavel Platonov did rather well. After four victories and one defeat (losing to the Japanese in the first match (0:3) and then beating the Slovaks (3:0), Russians (3:1), Poles (3:0) and Croatians (3:1)) they came third, reaching the play-offs for the 1/4 final. They then lost to Singapore (1:3), which knocked them out, leaving them to fight for 9-12th place.
