Reigning world champion Russia trounced Kazakhstan 3-0 on Wednesday to snap its two-game losing streak in the Beijing Games women's volleyball preliminaries.
The Russian women, who had lost to Italy and Brazil in its first two matches, had no great trouble delivering the lowly ranked Asian team 25-19, 25-18 and 25-11 in the pool B clash at the Capital Gymnasium.
"I am very happy for the victory, we played better and better in the last two games," said Russian head coach Giovanni Caprara. "I am confident that we can make the quarterfinals and even go further."
Ekaterina Gamova led Russia with 14 points with Liubov Shashkova and Natalia Alimova adding 13 apiece.
"It's good to win the first victory, I think we played more aggressively today than we did in the last two games," said Russia captain Marina Sheshenina. "Hopefully we will play better in the next games."
Kazakhstan, who claimed the fourth and final berth for the Beijing Games at the Olympic qualification tournament in Japan in May, has yet to record a win in three tries in the round-robin play.
"It's great honor and opportunity for us to participate in the highest level competition like the Olympics and play against strong teams like Russia, we are here to learn from the strong teams," said Kazakhstan head coach Viktor Zhuravlev. "I would like to wish Russia good luck in its pursuit of the gold medal."
Yelena Pavlova scored 17 points to lead the Kazakhstan offense.
Twelve teams are competing in two groups in the round robin preliminaries with top four finishers from each group to qualify for the quarterfinals.
(Xinhua News Agency August 13, 2008)