Season’s fourth Elite16 event to feature all of world’s top 10 men’s teams
Published 10:24, 25 May 2023
David Schweiner at Ostrava centre court
There will be no major absences at next week’s Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour men’s Elite16 event in Ostrava (May 31 – June 4), as the entry list features all of the top 10 teams from the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Ranking, with some of them even having to play qualifiers on Wednesday.
· Watch all matches at the Beach Pro Tour Ostrava Elite16 event live on VBTV.
Mol & Sorum during last year’s Ostrava final
Last year’s Ostrava Elite16 winners Anders Mol & Christian Sorum of Norway will return to Czechia’s third largest city to defend their title. The Beachvolley Vikings, reigning Olympic and world champions and World Ranking leaders, will have the number one seed in the main draw bracket. They reached the finals at each of the previous three Elite16 tournaments this year to up their Beach Pro Tour podium count to five gold, two silver and two bronze medals. For their first match in Ostrava, Mol & Sorum will take on recently reunited pair of top-calibre Brazilians Pedro Solberg & Gustavo Carvalhaes (Guto), who made their Beach Pro Tour debut as a team last month in Uberlandia. France’s Youssef Krou & Arnaud Gauthier-Rat, who won the Torquay Elite16 in December and made the final of the Itapema Challenge to climb to number 15 in the World Ranking, will also compete in Pool A.
The teams ranked second, fourth and seventh in the world are set to deliver some titanic clashes in Pool B. Fourth-ranked Swedes David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig headline the pool as the second-seeded duo in the Ostrava main draw. The 21-year-old reigning European champions will be looking for their seventh Beach Pro Tour podium, but will have to go against the world’s number two team, Alexander Brouwer & Robert Meeuwsen of the Netherlands, in their first match of the tournament. The 10th-seeded Dutchmen have previously collected four medals on the Tour, including an Ostrava 2022 bronze, but are still hungry for their first gold. Also aiming for their fifth Beach Pro Tour podium, Tokyo 2020 Olympic bronze medallists and former World Ranking leaders Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan of Qatar are the third team to start their Ostrava campaign from Pool B.
Pool C will be headlined be third-seeded Adrian Carambula & Alex Ranghieri. The two Italian Olympians, who reunited late into the 2022 season, have already picked up three medals together, but are still after their first gold. The world’s number six, Michal Bryl & Bartosz Losiak of Poland, will be their biggest obstacle in pool play. The Polish Olympians have already pocketed four Beach Pro Tour golds within a total count of six medals, including bronze at the last Elite16 tournament in Uberlandia. Representing the host country, Czechs Krystof Jan Oliva & Tadeas Trousil will also compete in this pool.
Czechia’s top team Ondrej Perusic & David Schweiner will certainly draw the most attention among the home fans in Ostrava. Ranked fifth in the world and seeded fourth at the tournament, Perusic & Schweiner will try to put on another solid performance under the ironworks of the iconic venue at the Lower Vitkovice industrial heritage site. At the first four world tournaments in Ostrava, they always reached the top four, claiming three consecutive silvers in 2019, 2021 and 2022. Having taken three Beach Pro Tour silvers in 2022, now they will get inspiration not only from the incredible home crowd in Ostrava, but also from their first Tour gold they snatched last month in Uberlandia. The Czechs will, however, have to go against powerful opponents in Pool D, in fifth-seeded Germans Clemens Wickler & Nils Ehlers, looking for their first final after piling up three bronze medals on the Tour, and Dutchmen Stefan Boermans & Yorick de Groot, who were the world’s number one team just a year ago and, after De Groot’s return from a long injury-prompted absence, they claimed their first Tour medal, a La Paz Challenge silver in March of this year.
The lineup for Wednesday’s qualifiers that will fill the remaining four vacancies in the main draw also features plenty of high-level duos, promising gigantic battles right from the start. The World Ranking’s number three Andre Stein & George Wanderley of Brazil and number eight Paolo Nicolai & Samuele Cottafava of Italy are among the 16 teams vying to join the main draw 16. So are the two teams sharing the ninth place in the ranking, Chile’s Marco Grimalt & Esteban Grimalt and Brazil’s Renato Lima & Vitor Felipe of Brazil, among a number of other top stars of men’s beach volleyball who will test the sand in Wednesday’s qualifiers.
A total of 28 men’s pairs from 15 different countries are set to compete for their share of the US$ 150,000 prize money (per gender) and precious points towards Paris 2024 Olympic qualification.
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