How about a tournament where someone like three-time Olympian Alexander Horst has to play qualifications or someone like three-time Olympic champion and four-time Olympic medallist Kerri Walsh Jennings has to play country quota? That can happen, especially when the race for Olympic berths is so heated and so many top-level athletes are eager to book their tickets to Tokyo 2020 with about two months to go before the Games in Japan.
And it is exactly the situation at this week’s 4-star double-gender stop in Sochi where the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour elite returns for the first time in over five years, after the two Sochi Open events in 2015 and 2016, and just days after the same venue hosted a Russian national tour competition. The penultimate 4-star tournament before the Olympic qualification cut-off date in June is set to see the mercury rise as the world’s top beach volleyball talent gathers to compete at the Sport Inn Hotel & Wellness complex on the Russian Black Sea coast.
105 teams (53 women’s and 52 men’s duos) from 26 different countries have registered to compete in Sochi. The US$ 300,000 prize money tournament started on Tuesday, May 25, with the country quota matches in both genders, and will last through Sunday, May 30, when the men’s medals will be issued.
In a thrilling three-setter, Travis Mewhirter and Adam Roberts wasted a triple match point at 14-11 before finally acing for a 2-1 (19-21, 21-17, 20-18) victory over fellow Americans Chaim Schalk and Theodore Brunner. USA’s Brooke Sweat and Kerri Walsh Jennings and Germany’s Kim Behrens and Sandra Ittlinger won the deciding country quota games on the women’s side to qualify for the qualifications.
In each gender, a 32-team main draw will feature a modified pool play system with the top three duos in each four-team pool advancing to the single elimination phase. The pool winners will progress directly to the eighthfinals, while the pool runners-up and the third-placed pairs will play in the round of 24. With 24 duos seeded directly into the main draw, the remaining eight spots will be contested in qualifications to be played on Wednesday.
Reigning world champions, 34-year-old Rio Olympian Sarah Pavan and 28-year-old Melissa Humana-Paredes, lead the Sochi women’s preliminary seeding on entry points. In addition to the 2019 world title, the Canadians have already won five golds, six silvers and a bronze on the World Tour as a pair, but have yet to top the podium in 2021, after two runner-up finishes in Doha and Cancun.
Two Brazilian duos complete the top three in the preliminary seeding. Rio Olympic silver medallist and 2015 world champion Agatha Bednarczuk and 2014 Youth Olympic champion and five-time age-category world champion Eduarda Santos Lisboa (Duda) are next down the list. Since they formed their partnership in 2017, they have earned six gold medals towards a total of 19 podiums on the World Tour together. Agatha and Duda have medalled at every single 4-star event in 2021 so far, claiming the trophy at Cancun 2.
Taiana Lima and three-time Olympian Talita Da Rocha Antunes are third in line. Each of the two well-seasoned Brazilians has won FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship medals in her career. They are in their second period as partners, after a very successful first collaboration in 2013-2014 when they became season champions of World Tour 2013. Winning the title at the first of three Cancun events in 2021, Taiana Lima and Talita improved their overall team record on the Tour to six golds, three silvers and a bronze.
In addition to these three pairs, Canada and Brazil will be represented in the main draw by at least one more pair each. Germany, Russia and USA have three teams each among the other duos with direct seeding. The Netherlands and Switzerland have two each while the remaining pairs come from Austria, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Poland and Spain.
FIVB World Ranking leaders Anders Mol (23) and Christian Sorum (25) of Norway also lead the Sochi men’s preliminary seeding on entry points. The World Tour season champions in 2018 and 2019 came back to claim gold at both 2021 events they attended together. With the trophies from Cancun 1 and 2, the young Norwegians now have a World Tour showcase with 12 gold, three silver and two bronze medals, including their third place finish at the 2019 World Championship.
Another pair of young and promising athletes, Julius Thole and Clemens Wickler of Germany, come second on entry points. Since winning three silver and two bronze medals at FIVB events in 2018 and 2019, including a runner-up finish at the World Championship, they have yet to return to the podium in 2021.
Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan, who complete the men’s top three ahead of the tournament in Sochi, on the other hand, have had a fabulous 2021 season so far. Before that, they had collected only three World Tour bronze medals as a team, but this year they claimed two gold and two silver medals out of the five World Tour events they played at.
The line-up of 21 more pairs, seeded directly into the Sochi men’s main draw, includes three Russian and three American teams, two duos each from Brazil, Italy, Latvia, the Netherlands and Poland, and one each from Chile, Czechia, Germany, Spain and Switzerland.
Quick links:
FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour - Sochi
Olympic Games Tokyo 2020
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