Anastasia Ekhlakova: Among our rivals I single out the athletes from Poland and Portugal 07.07.2010

But don’t envy her as she is working up a sweat performing in a little-known sport – beach volleyball.

- Anastasia, according to the previous team entry form there was another pair of Ksenia Meltseva/Anna Kurshina to represent Kazan at the Championsip. How come you replaced Kurshina?
- The thing is Anna was operated for appendicitis. And I had to replace her. I’m toned up. I have recently played with my partner in the women’s Economist team Rimma Dolotkazina in the first round of the Russian Beach Volleyball Championship.

- Can you compare the levels of the tournaments you compete in?
- To tell the truth the skill level of the Russian Championship players was higher. But it’s not surprising. The national tour was for pros and this Championship is for best university players.

- Then how do you explain your two defeats at the start of the Student Championship?
- It’s simple. We lost because of our inexperience. The other teams has been training beach volleyball for a long time and we transferred from indoor to beach about a week before the Championship. And we also changed partners and didn’t have time to get accustomed to each other and a good chemistry is very important in beach volleyball. There is a huge difference between beach and indoor as if they were two different kinds of sport. Of course we’ve already played beach volley. For instance last year I was the winner of amateur competitions at the Riviera Championship. But it was not really professional as you need different training sessions for that. You have to understand that our indoor volleyball skills just interfere with beach volleyball play. There you have the sun, wind and sand up to your knees and it doesn’t bother you. And in indoor you even jump up in a different way. You cannot even tear away properly, there is a different running style (smiles). So we couldn’t perform good jumps though we jump really high when playing indoor volleyball. Everything is dif-fer-ent!

- Who will you single out among your rivals?
- I would name the athletes from Poland and Portugal. They are beach volleyball players to the core. They see the playing area and know how to play. They’ve got experience. Besides I noticed that they use a special style of throwing the ball over the net. Yet I’ve seen this style before in indoor as well when we played against beach volleyball players. It was hard for them to catch the trick of indoor volleyball and we used it as our advantage.

- What position do you play in Economist?
- I’m a first tempo attacker. Basically it’s not bad for a beach volleyball player. I think that beach volleyball is not easy for liberos or setters who don’t attack so much. And we lack experience in receiving balls as in indoor it’s libero’s duty to do it.

- You are the captain of the Economist team that competed in the European Universities Championship last year and placed fifth…
- Yes. You are right. Last year we won the Russian Universities Championship and earned berth in the European Championship. It was held in Germany and we had the bad luck and faced the strongest teams of the Championship in the qualifiers. Eventually they topped the Championship with gold and silver medals. But this year we have been training to take revenge in the Championship that will take place in Prague.

Jaudat Abdullin, special correspondent of press-center
VII European Universities Beach Volleyball Championship