The reigning world champions in both genders finished the season and will start the new one as the number one teams in the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Rankings as of the most recent weekly update of the charts. The first event on the 2023 Beach Pro Tour also marks the beginning of the qualification phase for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.
Beach Pro Tour
World champs top World Rankings ahead of new season
Published 09:00, 01 Feb 2023
Duda in action
Long-time men’s leaders Anders Mol and Christian Sorum, who lost the number one spot to Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in the summer of 2021, regained it in October 2022 after winning the Paris Elite16. Currently, the Beachvolley Vikings have 8,450 points, an impressive 1,230 points more than the Qataris and Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen of the Netherlands, who share the second position on 7,220 points each.
Cherif and Ahmed led the World Ranking from August 2021 until May 2022, and Brower and Meeuwsen took over from them, but only for a week in early May. Then another Dutch team, Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot stepped into the lead, but that also lasted only three weeks as De Groot’s season was interrupted by an injury.
Andre Stein and George Wanderley of Brazil, who led the men’s World Ranking from May 30 to October 3, are currently fourth on 7,060 points.
Poland’s Michal Bryl and Bartosz Losiak, who won the highest number of gold medals during the inaugural Beach Pro Tour season along with Mol and Sorum (four each), stand fifth in the chart on 6,700 points.
With 6,480 points each, Czechia’s Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner and Italy’s Paolo Nicolai and Samuele Cottafava share the sixth place. The top 10 is completed by Brazil’s Renato Lima and Vitor Felipe (5,900 points), Chile’s Marco Grimalt and Esteban Grimalt (5,800) and Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig (5,560).
Rome 2022 women’s world champions Eduarda Santos Lisboa (Duda) and Ana Patricia Ramos climbed to the number one spot in the women’s World Ranking on November 7, right after winning bronze at the Cape Town Elite16. Twelve weeks later, the Brazilians are still at the top with 8,560 points, as many as 1,300 clear of second-ranked compatriots Barbara Seixas and Carol Solberg.
Barbara and Carol headed the chart on July 11 after claiming Gstaad Elite16 silver and kept their position for 16 weeks until Duda and Ana Patricia took over. Now they are second on 7,260 points.
The previous leaders, Dutch pair Katja Stam and Raisa Schoon, who occupied the top for 12 weeks after medalling at the first three high-level Beach Pro Tour stops and taking over from Duda’s former partnership with Agatha Bednarczuk, are now down to third place on 7,000 points, or 280 above fourth-ranked Australians Taliqua Clancy and Mariafe Artacho Del Solar, and another 200 above fifth-ranked Latvians Anastasija Samoilova and Tina Graudina.
Two more European duos are next down the list. Switzerland’s Nina Brunner and Tanja Huberli are sixth on 6,130 points and Germany’s Cinja Tillmann and Svenja Muller are seventh on 5,700.
Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss are the highest ranked US pair, eighth on 5,600 points, followed by another American duo, Terese Cannon and Sarah Sponcil, just 100 points below them in ninth. At the same time, their recently reunited compatriots Sara Hughes and Kelly Cheng, who won gold at all three of their Beach Pro Tour appearances so far, are already up to position 67 in the ranking.
The women’s top 10 is completed by the former partnership of Germany’s Karla Borger and Julia Sude, who split up as a pair and will compete to qualify for Paris 2024 with different partners.
The FIVB Beach Volleyball World Ranking is established on the FIVB Beach Volleyball ranking points earned at the eight best performance as a team in all FIVB sanctioned or homologated beach volleyball tournaments over a 365-days period. The FIVB Olympic Ranking, on the other hand, will take into account the 12 best performances achieved by a pair in the window from 1 January 2023 (the first event that offers points is the Elite16 tournament in Doha) to 10 June 2024. The top 17 ranked teams (per gender) will qualify for the Olympics alongside one team from the hosts (France), the 2023 World Champions and the five teams that win the Continental Olympic Tournaments.
