Qatari stars Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan are about to make their first appearance on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour, after claiming bronze at December’s 2024 Tour Finals in Doha, as they headline the impressive men’s line-up at the Xiamen Challenge, starting on Wednesday in China. It is the season’s second stop of that category, after Mexico’s Yucatan Challenge in March. Xiamen will host a Beach Pro Tour event for the second straight year and it will run from May 14 to May 18.
Challenge - Xiamen, CHN - 2025
Cherif & Ahmed headline men’s entries at Xiamen Challenge
The Beach Pro Tour event in China starts on Wednesday
Published 12:46, 13 May 2025
- Watch the Xiamen Challenge on VBTV
Three of the four top teams in the Yucatan final standings will be back in action as the first event of such a high level in the Eastern Hemisphere this year takes place in Xiamen. Reigning world champions Ondrej Perusic & David Schweiner of Czechia are the only exception, but they will have a well-fitting replacement in Cherif & Ahmed. The Qatari standouts, who finished bronze medalists at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games and in fourth place at Paris 2024, are a former world’s number one team. They are currently “only” 10th in the FIVB World Ranking, all the more reason for them to excel in China and start regaining their ground in the chart. So far in 2025, Cherif & Ahmed have played mainly in continental and zonal competitions and topped a few podiums in the process, including one just last week at the AVC Asian Beach Tour in Pingtan, China, and now they are about to rejoin the Beach Pro Tour’s world elite, starting from Xiamen.
Yucatan Challenge runners-up Yves Haussener & Julian Friedli of Switzerland, bronze medalists Joao Pedrosa & Hugo Campos of Portugal and semifinalists Christoph Dressler & Philipp Waller of Austria will all be back for more in China this week.
One of last year’s Xiamen medalists will also be back for more. Paris 2024 Olympian Arnaud Gauthier-Rat of France, who took silver at the 2024 edition, will now compete alongside his current partner, 2021 U19 world champion Teo Rotar. Another two of the participants in last summer’s Olympics, Miles Evans & Chase Budinger of the United States, will return to Xiamen trying to do even better than the fourth place they took in 2024.
There is actually a long line of Olympians, set to take to the sand courts in Xiamen. Australia’s Mark Nicolaidis & Izac Carracher, who played in Paris together, are continuing their preparation for the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships their country is set to host later this year. Austria’s Alexander Huber & Robin Seidl, who played together at the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympics, have teamed up again this year and will join the Xiamen action from Wednesday’s qualifications.
The list of Olympians who will compete in Xiamen, either in the qualifiers or among the 24 teams pre-seeded to the main draw, but with new partners, also includes France’s Remi Bassereau, Italy’s Samuele Cottafava, Alex Ranghieri and Enrico Rossi, Austria’s Alexander Horst (four-time Olympian!) and Julian Horl, USA’s Tri Bourne, Switzerland’s Adrian Heidrich and Poland’s Piotr Kantor.
The Xiamen Challenge tournament will be conducted under the recently adopted new format, with a 32-team main draw per gender. It starts with two rounds of qualifiers with eight teams advancing to the main draw and joining the 24 directly seeded. The main draw begins with modified pool play, with eight pools of four teams each, playing two pool semifinals, a losers’ match and a winners’ match to determine the final standings. The teams that finish third in the pools will take on the runners-up of other pools in the sixteenthfinal single elimination round, the winners of which will move to the eighthfinal round, where they will challenge the eight pool winners. Quarterfinals, semifinals and medal matches will follow to determine the final standings.
Men’s Xiamen Challenge action will get underway with the qualifiers on Wednesday morning at 09:50 local time (01:50 UTC).
