The Turkmenistan women's handball team will play in the bronze medal match at the VI Asian beach games, which are currently underway in the Chinese resort city of Sanya on Hainian Island, located in southern PRC. This became known following the results of the semi-final matches.
The first to take to the court of the Tianya Haijiao cluster were the handball players from Turkmenistan and Vietnam. Before this game, our compatriots won against their opponents from Sri Lanka - 2:0 (12:10, 8:4), lost with the same score to the hosts of the Games - the Chinese (3:16, 13:22), won a comeback victory over the Mongolian team - 2:1 (14:16, 12:10, 10:4) and took second place in Group «B». The Vietnamese team won Group «A», beating Thailand, Hong Kong, and the Philippines with identical scores of 2:0.
The semi-final match turned out to be difficult for our team. Throughout the game, the players coached by Gulendam Narbayeva and Marina Divanova fought their opponents with dignity, as evidenced by the tense nature of the match. In the first period they tied the score four times – 2:2, 8:8, 10:10, 12:12, but nevertheless lost – 18:22. At the beginning of the second period, the Turkmen handball players were fighting equally on the court, but later the more experienced Vietnamese were able to increase the gap in the score and bring the set to victory – 30:17.
In the other semi-final, the Chinese team won against the Thai team 2:1 (16:14, 20:22, 20:18).
In this way, in the match for the bronze medals, the handball players of Turkmenistan will play with the representatives of Thailand, who in the group stage of the competition lost to Vietnam - 0:2 (16:20, 18:22) and won comeback victories over the Philippines - 2:1 (12:14, 18:10, 9:8) and Hong Kong - 2:1 (18:19, 21:11, 7:4). The teams of Vietnam and China will compete for gold and silver medals in the final.
The Asian beach games have been held under the auspices of the Olympic council of Asia since 2008. The current, 6th edition of the Games brought together athletes from 45 Asian countries, who are competing for 62 sets of medals in 14 sports.
Turkmenistan is represented at the Asian beach games in Sanya by ten athletes in only one event – handball of the women.
