Tenerife, Canary Islands, February 22, 2010 - With the start of the 2010 SWATCH FIVB World Tour season less than two months away, teams from Norway, Poland and Spain have been busy training here on the islands off the west coast of Africa.
Hosting the Norwegians and Poles were the Spanish pairs of Adrian Gavira Collado/Pablo Herrera and Inocencio Lario/Raul Mesa along with Coach Sixto Jimenez, who placed fifth in the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games with Javier Bosma. The Norwegian tandems were Oivind Hordvik/Iver Horrem and Tarjei Skarlund/Martin Spinnangr with the Polish pairs being Grzegorz Fijalek/Mariusz Prudel and Michal Kadziola/Jakub Szalankiewicz.
“Tenerife has been like a second home,” said Spaniard Raul Mesa, who helps organize the training sessions. I have been training here since the start of my professional career with Pablo Herrera. We live here during winter time to prepare for the season as the weather conditions create ideal conditions for training.”
Mesa, who has been competing full-time on the SWATCH FIVB World Tour since 2003, said the coaches from Norway, Poland and Spain “organize the camp together to know what we are going to work on. The plans are dictated by the length of the stay for each team on the island. We make sure that each team has a chance to train with all the teams before they return home.”
For the past two years, the Spanish and other international teams have been training in the new facility in the south of Tenerife in the locality of Adeje. “At the beginning, we always were on the beach of Los Cristianos,” said Mesa. “It was a good site, but the new site has better at conditions featuring a swimming pool and tennis courts.”
All six teams will continue their current partnerships with the Poles being together the longest while the Spaniards and Norwegians will be playing together for the second-straight season. Mesa and Herrera teamed together for an appearance in the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games where the Spaniards placed ninth before claiming a gold medal together in the next international event in Kristiansand, Norway.
Mesa and Herrera, who captured the FIVB’s 2002 junior world championships for players under the age of 21 in Catania, Italy, split after the 2008 season to form new partnerships. While Mesa and Lario finished 22nd on the 2009 SWATCH FIVB World Tour with a season-best finishes in Russia and China, Herrera and Gavira placed third on the international ranking list for the best-ever placement by a Spanish team.
Despite not winning a SWATCH gold medal in 2009, Herrera and Gavira posted five FIVB podium placements with a pair of silver medal finishes in France and The Netherlands. Herrera and Gavira also competed in five European events in 2009 with two titles in Austria and England.
“We started the last season with not a very good feeling after Lario´s surgery,” said Mesa, “but at the end of the year we felt we were improved. Now, we know how the team can work so we are working hard on our skills to make a stronger team. Ball control and side out is our priority for this season.”
With the Norwegians and Polish pairs departing, the Spanish will host other European teams in the coming weeks, including 2009 SWATCH FIVB World champions Julius Brink and Jonas Reckermann of Germany. Other tandems will be Patrick Heuscher/Sascha Heyer and Philip Gabathuler/Jan Schnider from Switzerland and Germans Jonathan Erdmann/Kay Matysik.
Windy weather conditions have also helped the teams with their preparation, according to Mesa. “It is great for us because we need it to learn how to play in the wind,” Mesa noted. We think it will be great preparation for tournaments like Marseille or The Hague.”
Mesa and his Spanish friends are “pleased to host all the teams who want to come here. This is a nice and safe place, not so expensive where we are all together to improve the level of play in Europe to get closer of the level of American and Brazilian teams. We also have the young Spanish teams training in the beach (men and woman) to prepare all the different junior championships. They are happy to have the experience of training with us.”
While the Polish team of Fijalek and Prudel placing 26th on the 2009 SWATCH FIVB World Tour with a season-best placement of seventh for a home country stop in Stare Jablonki, Kadziola and Szalankiewicz joined Herrera and Mesa as junior world champions by winning the title for players under the age of 21 last September in Blackpool, England. Kadziola and Szalankiewicz were also the FIVB youth world champions by capturing the 2007 title for players under the age of 19 in Myslowice, Poland.
Skarlund and Spinnangr finished the 2009 SWATCH season as the 25th-ranked pair as the Norwegians posted a seventh-, 13th-, ninth- and fifth-place finishes for their last four events. Horrem, an Athens 2004 Olympic, and Hordvik competed in only three events together last season with a 17th-place finish in Kristiansand after upsetting 2005 FIVB world champions Marcio Araujo and Fabio Magalhaes in a first-round match.
