Arthur Canet and Teo Rotar, who won last year’s FIVB Beach Volleyball U19 World Championship in Phuket, are back to defend their title as the 2022 edition of the competition takes place in Dikili, Türkiye from September 14 through 18. The French pair are one of 96 teams (48 per gender) to battle it out for planetary honours on Türkiye’s Aegean coast this week, and France is one of the 43 countries from all five continental confederations to be represented.
Beach U19 World Championships 2022
France’s Canet & Rotar set for defence of U19 world title in Türkiye
The 17th edition of the FIVB Beach Volleyball U19 World Championships starts in Dikili, Türkiye on Wednesday
Published 01:43, 13 Sept 2022
Rotar (left) and Canet triumph at the 2021 U19 World Championships
Having won last December’s tournament in Thailand without dropping a single set across seven matches played, 18-year-old Rotar and 17-year-old Canet are the big favourites for this year’s title in Dilikli. Less than a month ago, Canet and Rotar also took their first Beach Pro Tour medal, a Montpellier Futures silver.
However, Austrians Timo Hammarberg and Tim Berger, who defeated the French duo at this year’s U20 European Championship final in Izmir, just 120 km south of Dikili, arrive in Türkiye as continental champs, and can also be considered among the main medal candidates at the U19 World Championship.
Latvia’s Kristians Fokerots and Gustavs Auzins, this year’s U18 European champions from just two weeks ago, 2022 U19 Asian champions Phuthanet Khamtao and Saiphirun Ruairung of Thailand, as well as Brazil’s Pedro Sousa and Henrique Camboim, and Chile’s Martin Etcheberry and Maximiliano Cordova de Halleux, who met in the South American Youth Games 2022 final, are not to be discounted among the top contenders either.
On the women's side, and despite being only 17 and 14 years of age, respectively, U20 European Championship silver medallists Deniela Konstantinova and Liva Ebere of Latvia are among the favourites. So are U18 European Championship gold and silver medallists Anna Pavelkova/Katerina Pavelkova of Czechia and Lia Berger/Emma Hohenauer of Austria, respectively. Other teams to look out for include Thailand’s Salinda Mungkhon/Samitta Simarongnam, who won this year’s U19 Asian Championship, and Canada’s Emma Glagau/Ruby Sorra, who are the only top eight team from Phuket 2021 to compete again this year.
28 duos were seeded directly into the 32-team main draw in each gender, which gets underway on Thursday. The event will start on Wednesday with a 20-team qualification tournament, which will fill the remaining vacancies in the pool phase.
The 32 main draw pairs in each gender will be split into eight round-robin pools. The pool winners will advance straight to the round of 16, while the pool runners-up and the third-placed teams will have the chance to progress through the round of 24. Both of these direct elimination rounds and the quarterfinals are scheduled on Saturday, leaving the semifinals and the medal matches for the culmination on Sunday.
FIVB 19 Yaş Altı Plaj Voleybolu Dünya Şampiyonası’nın Basın Toplantısı Düzenlendi.
— Türkiye Voleybol Federasyonu (@TVForgtr) September 12, 2022
⛓ https://t.co/de8n5DOMVK pic.twitter.com/963EGEVRs9
This will be the 17th edition of the youth World Championship in beach volleyball. The first was held back in 2002. Brazilian pairs have won the girls’ title four times and German pairs three times. On the boys’ side, Poland leads the way with four crowns, while Brazil and Germany have three each.
The list of past winners includes highly recognizable names in the world of beach volleyball, like reigning women's world champion Eduarda Santos Lisboa (Duda) of Brazil, her compatriots and current World Ranking leaders George Wanderley for men and Barbara Seixas for women, Pedro Solberg, also of Brazil, Germany’s Laura Ludwig and Clemens Wickler, Poland’s Michal Bryl, Bartosz Losiak and Piotr Kantor, the Netherlands’ Sanne Keizer and many others. Other participants even include today’s indoor volleyball stars Tine Urnaut of Slovenia and Lukasz Kaczmarek of Poland.
