U-185 v'ball event a rare chance for Russian twins

Eva C. Komandjaja, The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

The just-concluded U-185 men's world volleyball championship gave twin brothers Dmitri and Serguei Mikhailov a rare chance to play together on the Russian national team in an international tournament.

With an average height of 1.85 meters, Serguei and Dmitri know they have little chance of playing for the "real" Russian national team, which generally picks players more than two meters tall.

"We hope the volleyball federation in Russia can create this kind of competition in Russia so we can participate in it," Dmitri told The Jakarta Post.

Russia is a traditional force in world volleyball, but its U- 185 team did not look that strong, finishing last in the five- team championship that was won by host Indonesia.

They lost all four of their matches against eventual runner-up Taiwan, third place Myanmar, Japan and Indonesia.

Summing up the team's performance, Serguei said that despite comprising some of the best volleyball players in Russia, they team had no experience in this type of competition.

"The players here are playing a totally different volleyball from what we have seen in Russia," Dmitri said.

"We have seen good matches here where the players had very high technical skills and applied different strategies. We got a lot of good experience by playing here," Serguei added.

This was very similar to assistant coach Ilya Volodarskiy's thoughts on Russia's participation in the event. He said the team not only came to collect victories, but also to learn and gather new experiences.

Despite the losses, the Russian team's performance was always interesting and worth watching, mostly due to the play of the twin spikers.

Dmitri and Serguei Mikhailov, easily recognizable from their long hair and headbands, always entertained the crowd with deft spikes and pleasing performances.

One or the other of the brothers was always in front of the net, ready to smash the ball down on their hapless opponents.

Their smashing prowess provided the brothers some measure of personal satisfaction despite all the losses, with the blonde- haired Dmitri being ranked as the third best spiker of the competition and the brown-haired Serguei ranked fifth.

Their father, Pavel Mikhailov, may be the team's manager, but the 21-year-old brothers proved that they deserve their places on the team.

Raised in a volleyball-loving family in Siberia, the Mikhailov brothers grew up playing soccer before switching to volleyball at the suggestion of their father.

They joined a volleyball school in Siberia when they were 11 and began to develop their volleyball skills.

"Volleyball is much more interesting than soccer as it is more dynamic," Dmitri said.

Currently enrolled at Tumen Oil University in Siberia where they major in computer science, both Serguei and Dmitri play for Russia's professional volleyball club Fakel Urengoi.

The Mikhailov brothers said they were keen to return to Indonesia when the country hosted another U-185 volleyball championship.