Toronto, Canada, September 14, 2016 - Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins of Latvia scored a 2-1 (21-17, 22-24, 15-9) Pool B win in 55 minutes here Wednesday afternoon on the Polson Pier center court over Poland's Grzegorz Fijalek and Mariusz Prudel.
It was the Latvian's seventh win in eight FIVB World Tour meetings with Fijalek and Prudel as the match featured Rio 2016 Olympians. While Smedins, Fijalek and Prudel have competed in two Olympics, Samoilovs has played in three.
Janis Smedins - “This is the last tournament for us this year and we’ll try to enjoy it how much we can with the power we have left because the season was long and we’ll try to our best.”
Aleksandrs Samoilovs - “It’s never easy. Ten years ago when I started to play it was like five, eight teams fighting for medals, now it’s any main draw team can get a medal in a Grand Slam. It’s the best of the best here. We have to play 100 percent every game.
“It was like straight after Rio we needed to have good results so we went straight to Long Beach and it was important to us to have good emotions and good games to forget it faster and recover emotionally faster. Then CEV Masters in Jurmala in front of our home crowd and now we’ve recovered. It’s in the past. We can’t change anything now.
“They’re a very good team (Fijalek/Prudel) and as the announcer said, a very experienced team. I think we are not comfortable for them. It’s always you have more comfortable teams and less comfortable opponents. We have a good percentage and I’m happy it’s not the other way."
Mariusz Prudel - “We didn’t play our best, and that's why we lost.”