Earlier this month, at the Gstaad Elite, Ehlers made his first appearance on the Beach Pro Tour since last year’s Adelaide 2025 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship, where he finished fourth with his regular partner Clemens Wickler. However, with Wickler currently sidelined with a persistent shoulder injury, Ehlers appeared in Gstaad alongside 24-year-old Lui Wust. They are about to return for their second Tour participation together as one of the teams, pre-seeded straight into the men’s main draw in Shangluo.
A World Championship silver medalist is also present among the candidates for this week’s podium in China. 43-year-old four-time Olympian and 2017 World Championship runner-up Alexander Horst of Austria shows no signs of slowing down and is about to hit the Shangluo sand along with current partner Paul Pascariuc.
The men’s pre-seeding on entry points is topped by the Australian pairing of Paris 2024 Olympian Thomas Hodges with Ben Hood. They are one of four Australian duos already set to compete in the Shangluo main draw. Another two of them are among the top five on entry points – D'Artagnan Potts & Jack Pearse, who have already made it to a couple of Challenge podiums this year, including the top of the one in Tlaxcala in March, and Paris Olympians Mark Nicolaidis & Izac Carracher.
The list of Olympians in the Shangluo main draw continues with names like those of Spain’s Adrian Gavira, Italy’s Alex Ranghieri and Austria’s Julian Horl.
The first-ever appearance of a Belarusian pair on the Beach Pro Tour is worth noting, as Aliaksandr Dziadkou & Pavel Piatrushka are also listed among the main draw entries.
The men’s entry list for Wednesday’s qualifications is also packed with names of high-caliber players, but let’s mention that of Poland’s 20-year-old Jakub Krzeminski, who is returning to the place, where he triumphed as a U19 world champion two years ago. This year, he is competing alongside 21-year-old Aleksander Czachorowski, with whom he has already collected four medals at the Futures level, including back-to-back golds from their last two participations on the Beach Pro Tour.
The Shangluo Challenge tournament will be conducted with a 32-team main draw in each gender. It starts on Wednesday with the qualification rounds, with eight teams progressing to the main draw and joining the 24 directly seeded. The main draw begins on Thursday with modified pool play, featuring eight pools of four teams each, playing two pool semifinals, a losers’ match and a winners’ match to determine the final pool 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 tournament standings.
Men’s qualification action in Shangluo is set to serve off on Wednesday at 08:00 local time (00:00 UTC).
