For most of the athletes competing at the three FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour 4-star events held at the Cancun Hub, in Mexico, the clear and obvious goal is to earn points and improve their Olympic qualification hopes for the Tokyo Games.
That’s not the case for Anastasija Kravcenoka and Tina Graudina.
As they secured their spots at the Games over 18 months ago at the Tokyo Qualification Tournament in Haiyang, China, the Latvians will have other objectives in mind when they compete in the main draw of the second tournament in Mexico, which starts on Friday.
The main one will be to regain their best form and chemistry before Tokyo. The Latvians are used to spending a fair portion of the year separated as the 23-year-old Graudina goes to college at the University of Southern California, in the United States, but last year has been unusual even by their own standards.
With competition suspended for a long time around the world, the Latvians have played together just once since they secured their Olympic berth, at last year’s European Championship, when they finished ninth.
With the Games less than 100 days away, it’s time they get to the level of game that made of them the World Tour’s Most Improved Team in 2019.
“We’re very grateful to have a tournament that we can play together at this moment”, Graudina said. “It will be good to see where we can still improve, and in which areas we have done a good job. The plan is that we play in every tournament we can from now on.”
To speed up that process and increase their training period before the start of the international season, Kravcenoka spent 10 weeks in Los Angeles training with Graudina before the tournaments in Cancun.
The team not only practised together, but also got to play against some of the top American teams that live in the area. Now they want to cap off that good preparation with some real action in Mexico.
“The training camp was good,” Kravcenoka said. “I could practise with Tina and I think we had a good time there. We’ll be a little more relaxed than the other teams in the tournament because we’re already qualified. But we’re excited to see the other teams after such a long time, so we want to play our best and smile.”
Kravcenoka (right) played with Varvara Brailko in the first event in CancunThe defender arrived in Cancun a week earlier than her partner and used that time to help develop new talent in her country as Kravcenoka had 18-year-old Varvara Brailko, a U20 European champion last year, as her partner for the first tournaments in Cancun.
The team played in the qualifier and lost to Norway’s Ane Tveit Hjortland and Emilie Olimstad, but more important than the result was the opportunity to give the talented Brailko some valuable experience at the elite level.
“It was amazing being on the court with such a young partner,” Kravcenoka added. “I could tell how happy she was, it was her first time at a 4-star. She was always talking about how happy she was to be by my side and that I was really good. I think we played well, but unfortunately not well enough.”
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Cancun Hub - 2nd event
Cancun Hub - 2nd event - Match schedule
Provisional Olympic ranking - Men
Provisional Olympic ranking - Women
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