Cuban beach volleyball due loses in Rio despite heroics

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil, Aug 16 (acn) The Cuban duo lost to Russia in the quarterfinal stage of the men's beach volleyball tournament of the 31 st Olympic Games, in the sands of Copacabana beach resort, in this city.

It was an extremely hard-fought match in which Europeans Konstantin Smenov and Viacheslav Krasilnikov won 2-1 (22-20, 24-22 and 18-16) over the Caribbean duet of Nivaldo Diaz and Sergio Gonzalez.
As expected, Diaz and Gonzalez received the deserved applause of those present in the installation by their outstanding performance, and even many of them regretted their stay out of the medals discussion.
The Cuban pair starred a major performance in the Games as they came here as practically unknown players and in the group stage they beat locals Solberg-Evandro, who appear 4th in the world rankings, Latvians Samoilovs-Smedins (12) and Canadians Saxton-Schalk (9) and in the round of 16, they eliminated Austrians Doppler-Horst (7).