Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 - Beach Volleyball

Just hours away from first whistle at Shiokaze Park

Olympic beach volleyball tournament set to start on Saturday morning in Tokyo

Published 10:37, 23 Jul 2021

The magnificent Olympic beach volleyball stadium at the Shiokaze Park in Tokyo is ready for the first whistle of the tournament set to sound at 10:00 local time on Saturday morning.

The first to take to the court will be defending Rio 2016 Olympic champion Alison Cerutti and his partner Alvaro Filho. The Brazilians will go against Julian Amado Azaad and Nicolas Capogrosso from neighbouring Argentina in the opening match of the tournament.

Right after that men’s Pool D fixture, women’s action will get underway with another Brazil-Argentina clash as Agatha Bednarczuk and Eduarda Santos Lisboa take on Ana Gallay and Fernanda Pereyra in Pool C.

View this post on Instagram
A post shared by alisonmamute (@alisonmamute)

The first match of the tournament would have been a nine o’clock women’s fixture between Japan’s Miki Ishii and Megumi Murakami and Czechia’s Barbora Hermannova and Marketa Slukova. Unfortunately, the Czechs had to withdraw from the tournament because of positive coronavirus test results.

The pandemic also prompted a change in the men’s field. Tri Bourne replaced Taylor Crabb as Jake Gibb’s partner in one of the American duos at the Olympics.

A total of 23 different countries will be represented on the sand court of Tokyo 2020, with the delegations of Brazil and USA each featuring the maximum allowed of two women’s and two men’s pairs.

Participating nations’ flags at Tokyo 2020 beach volleyball venue

The pool stage of the competition, including the lucky loser round, will take place from July 24 through 31. On each of these days, the matches will be divided into three sessions, with the morning session starting at 09:00, the afternoon session starting at 15:00, and the evening session starting at 20:00 local time.

In each gender, the 24 participating teams are divided into six round-robin pools of four. The pool winners, the pool runners-up and the two best ranked among the six third-placed teams will advance directly to the next phase. The four remaining third-placed duos in each gender will play two lucky loser matches to determine the last two eighthfinalists.

The remainder of the tournament will unfold in direct elimination format, with the eighthfinals on August 1 and 2, the quarterfinals on August 3 and 4 and the semifinals on August 5. The women’s medal matches will be played on August 6 and the men’s medallists will be determined on August 7.