After two weeks without major events, the 2023 season of the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour continues this week in Hamburg, as the Northern German city hosts the seventh Elite16 tournament of the year from Wednesday to Sunday.

The five-day competition at the iconic Am Rothenbaum Stadium will showcase the best of international beach volleyball from the start as six Olympic medalists will be in action on Wednesday’s qualifier.

• Watch the Beach Pro Tour Hamburg Elite16 matches live on VBTV

The qualifiers will reunite 16 teams in each gender and the best four men’s and women’s duos will advance to the main draw, where they will join the 12 best-seeded teams starting on Thursday. As many as 18 different countries will be represented in the Hamburg qualifier and those looking to qualify will need to win a pair of matches to do so.

A Rio 2016 Olympic champion, 37-year-old Laura Ludwig will count on the support of her home fans to advance to the main draw with Louisa Lippmann. Teammates for less than a year, the Germans are in arguably the best moment of their partnership so far, having finished fifth at the Edmonton Challenge in July and winning their first medal together at the European Championship two weeks ago, when they claimed bronze.

Besides the Olympic champion and the former volleyball national team star, German fans will have two other teams to root for on Wednesday’s qualifier as Leonie Körtzinger/Lea Kunst and Julia Sude/Isabel Schneider will also be in action on the first day of the event.

Also looking for a spot in the main draw will be Swiss Anouk Vergé-Dépré and Joana Mäder, the bronze medalists of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics. The Europeans couldn’t play together for more than ten months due to a shoulder injury sustained by Mäder and now seem to be regaining their best form after making their first semifinal appearance after getting back together at the European Championship.

The 12 other duos set to compete in the women’s qualifier in Hamburg are the Netherland’s Raisa Schoon/Katja Stam, Italy’s Marta Menegatti/Valentina Gottardi and Margherita Bianchin/Claudia Scampoli, Brazil’s Andressa Cavalcanti/Vitoria Rodrigues and Tainá Bigi/Victoria Lopes, Poland’s Jagoda Gruszczynska/Aleksandra Wachowicz, Lithuania’s Monika Paulikiene/Aine Raupelyte, China’s Jie Dong/Fan Wang, Spain’s Daniela Álvarez/Tania Moreno, France’s Lézana Placette/Alexia Richard, New Zealand’s Alice Zeimann/Olivia MacDonald and Slovenia’s Tjasa Kotnik/Tajda Lovsin.

Beach Pro Tour Hamburg Elite16 – Match Schedule

The men’s qualifier in Germany will see the Rio 2016 Olympic silver medalists, Italians Daniele Lupo and Paolo Nicolai, trying to advance with different partners. While Lupo is now paired with Enrico Rossi, Nicolai will be alongside Samuele Cottafava, with whom he recently took bronze at the Edmonton Challenge.

Also entered in the qualifier at the Am Rothenbaum Stadium is Spanish legend Pablo Herrera. The 41-year-old veteran, who took silver at the Athens 2004 Games, nearly 20 years ago, will be with longtime partner Adrián Gavira in their 142^nd international event together.

Also fighting for a main draw spot in Hamburg will be Brazil’s Vitor Felipe/Renato Lima, Poland’s Piotr Kantor/Jakub Zdybek, Australia’s Chris McHugh/Paul Burnett, Chile’s Marco Grimalt/Esteban Grimalt, Norway’s Hendrik Mol/Mathias Berntsen, Ukraine’s Sergiy Popov/Eduard Reznik, the Netherlands’ Steven van de Velde/Matthew Immers, China’s Jiaxin Wu/Likejiang Ha, Lithuania’s Patrikas Stankevicius/Audrius Knasas, Czechia’s Jan Dumek/Jiri Sedlak, England’s Javier Bello/Joaquin Bello, Switzerland’s Marco Krattiger/Florian Breer and Germany’s Philipp Huster/Simon Pfretzscher.

As many as 24 matches will be played on the opening day of the event, with the first of them scheduled for 09:00 local time (07:00 UTC). After the conclusion of Wednesday’s qualifier, the tournament continues with pool play on Thursday and Friday. The elimination rounds will be played on Saturday and the medal matches for both genders on Sunday.

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