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Wednesday, 21 October 2015 20:25

Beach tennis in Russia: ways of development

The International Tennis Tournament "Kremlin Cup by Bank of Moscow" is held in Moscow on 17-25 of October. Where you can see spectacular and star quality games, do selfies or get autographs from famous top players, walking through the "Olympic" sport complex. The tournament attracted the attention of many Russian beach tennis players too, who could found a window in their schedule of training ahead of the European Championships in Israel and came to support Russia at such an amazing tournament. BTRussia managed to meet and talk to Vice-President of Russian Tennis Federation Dmitry Vikharev.

BTRussia: Kremlin Cup - a big and very popular sport event which attracts huge number of spectators and tennis fans. And it would be nice for such a new kind of sport like beach tennis if a “big brother” gives a little support. Do you plan to organize some demonstrations of beach tennis to promote this dynamic and fun sport?

Dmitry Vikharev: Two years ago we did performance: we placed a net for beach tennis on standard tennis ground and gave a chance to try this game for our guests. But the main difficulty in the fact that beach tennis is all about sand. And if you make a full court on the sand, you need to offer guests to remove their shoes, which is not very comfortable. There were ideas to hold the beach tennis tournament during Kremlin Cup, but this way we would have to take a large area and “steal” the courts of the main tournament, which is also very difficult: Kremlin Cup has both - men and women competitions and needs a large number of courts. Therefore, we are working on other opportunities.

BTRussia: This year Moscow for the fourth time in a row held the World Team Beach Tennis Championships and would make another one next year. However, Shamil Tarpischev said that in the near future possible relocation to Kazan... would you comment this information?
Dmitry Vikharev: All new ways of development should be considered as parts of growing this sport in Russia: we could organize new kind of Championships in Kazan or we could move WTC there. Can’t say right now, but anyway, our work is focused on the expansion of beach tennis and going beyond the existing regions. Tatarstan is a powerful region with a developed infrastructure, and the start of beach tennis movement in Kazan can give another impulse to the promotion this sport.

BTRussia: WTC was held at the same time as The Davis Cup and, of course, all the attention of Russian Tennis Federation on media was focused on the classic tennis. Didn’t you think about the cooperation with the ITF for approval of tournaments schedule?

Dmitry Vikharev: Tennis calendar is very busy and it is difficult to say that we need to combine it with a beach tennis schedule. Within tennis there are some difficulties with calendar, and I prefer consider the beach tennis calendar as a separate area. The coincidence of time of major events shouldn’t be a barrier to the development of beach tennis. Our goal is to develop our sport independently from tennis and to fill it with spectators and fans without distracting attention from tennis.

BTRussia: Russia has many ITF tournaments, but Moscow, unfortunately, can’t boast a large number of tournaments in international category. Amateur level tournaments show that residents and guests of the capital have interest and desire to play. Are there any ways for a positive change in this direction for 2016?

Dmitry Vikharev: The main events that we do: BI-TENNIS FESTIVAL and THE WORLD TEAM CHAMPIONSHIPS took a lot of attention - organizational and financial. Our funding source provides funds under the organizational activity in these two areas, and traditional tournaments used to involve external financial source, so it’s necessary to attract sponsors. Beach tennis is quite a young sport, and the search for bigger sources continues. The perspectives for development of this sport include an increase the number of big tournaments with big money prize, and we have a proposal in this direction. We are thinking about a series of international tournaments with large prize pool and finals in Russia, which we plan to launch in the near future under the best of circumstances.

BTRussia: Russian Team will perform at the upcoming European Championships in Israel. On WTC our team took silver, and showed that is capable of more. What are your expectations of EC?

Dmitry Vikharev: As far as I know, this year Calbucci and Garavini are not going to represent Italy, so I think anything could happen. I think our guys could reach the finals in the men draw and the semifinals in the women draw. Also at mixed competitions Russia has a very strong double Burmakin/Churakova, and as far as the championships results are taken as a team performance, we have big chances to join the winners.