Familiar faces reign supreme on opening day of Champions Cup
It was a good start for the favourites on the opening day of the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup in Gran Canaria on Thursday.
In the men's competition, it was a perfect day for Spain as both Spanish sides took four points from their opening two games.
Defending champions Club BM Playa Ciudad de Malaga won both of their matches without losing a set, while Pinturas Andalucía BM Playa Sevilla lost a set in both of their victories.
Russia's "Ekaterinodar" Krasnodar, the defeated finalists in 2016, also registered a 100% record in Group B, as did Polish side BHT Auto Forum Petra Plock, who defeated Team Italia and SG Schurwald to join Malaga at the top of Group A.
Andras John of Orosházi FKSE Hír-Sat was the top scorer of the opening day, and he bagged 29 points in the 2-1 loss against Pinturas Andalucía BM Playa Sevilla.
In the women's competition, four teams won both of their games.
Hot favourites Multichem Szentendrei of Hungary and BHT GRU JUKO Piotrkow Trybunalski from Poland sit on top of Group A with maximum points, while Spain's C. BM Playa Algeciras and SPORT CLUB Senec - Cannabis Energy Drink of Slovakia lead Group B.
It was a historic day in Gran Canaria for the London Great Dane, who became the first British representative at the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup. They failed to win a set in either of their two matches.
Follow the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup live and on social media.
Over the four days of the tournament, the EHF offers all beach handball fans plenty of opportunities to follow the event.
All matches of Court 1 and Court 2 will be streamed live on ehfTV starting from Saturday, 13:30 hrs when the quarter-finals throw off.
This coverage will be supplemented by a number of highlight and best of-clips from the event which will also be available on Youtube as well as on the beach handball Facebook page.
All matches can be followed with the dedicated beach handball ticker and the respective statistics are available for all men's and all women's teams on the respective event pages.
Furthermore there will be continious updates via Instagram stories on the EHF Beach Handball account and on Snapchat (ehf_live).
TEXT:
Andrew Pickering