The biggest Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour event of the year will serve off on Wednesday, December 4. With a really powerful men’s list lining up 10 of the best teams in the world, the Beach Pro Tour Finals will last through Saturday, December 7, in the Qatari capital Doha. The fans at the magnificent Aspire Zone will be able to indulge in titanic battles between top-calibre duos.
competition/Beach Pro Tour
Titanic men’s clashes coming up at Doha Finals
The premier Beach Pro Tour event starts in Qatar on Wednesday
Published 11:47, 03 Dec 2024
Anders Mol against Jonatan Hellvig during the 2023 Doha Finals gold medal showdown
- Watch the Doha Finals on VBTV.
The 10 teams are split into two single round-robin pools of five. The two pool winners will advance straight to the semifinals, while the teams placed second or third will move to a quarterfinal round. Men’s action will start at 15:00 local time (12:00 UTC) on Wednesday.
Pool A
The men’s entry list for Doha is led by home favourites Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan, who will headline Pool A as the top seeds of the tournament. The Tokyo 2020 Olympic bronze medallists were close to repeating their success at this year’s Games in Paris, but this time finished in a prestigious fourth place. At their first Beach Pro Tour event after the Olympics in France, the former number one team in the FIVB World Ranking, currently ranked ninth, claimed a Joao Pessoa Elite16 silver after an epic three-set battle in the final against Norwegian standouts Anders Mol & Christian Sorum, arguably considered one of the most spectacular matches in the history of the sport. At last year’s Doha Finals, Cherif & Ahmed reached the semifinals and finished in fourth place.
The world’s number four team and also a former chart leader, Stefan Boermans & Yorick de Groot of the Netherlands, will begin their Doha campaign from Pool A too. They started the year with an Elite16 gold in Doha and hope to finish it with another gold in the Qatari capital. In between, the Dutch pair picked up silver at the Ostrava Elite16 and bronze at the Hamburg Elite16 and the Stare Jablonki Challenge, and reached the Olympic quarterfinals in Paris.
Paris Olympic silver medallists Nils Ehlers & Clemens Wickler of Germany will also compete in Pool A. They reached a number of final fours on the Beach Pro Tour during the year, but the only medal they got was another silver at the Espinho Elite16. The Germans also earned silver at the CEV European Championship in the Netherlands. During the year, Ehlers & Wickler peaked to number two in the world. Currently, they are ranked third.
Paolo Nicolai against Ahmed Tijan during the 2023 Doha Finals
Four-time Olympian, Rio de Janeiro 2016 silver medallist and three-time European champion Paolo Nicolai will play his very last professional tournament in Doha before retiring as a player. The 36-year-old Italian and his younger partner Samuele Cottafava will arrive at the Finals as the number 10 team in the world.
The already impressive Pool A line-up is further strengthened by Czech wild cards Ondrej Perusic & David Schweiner, the reigning world champions. In 2024, they collected two gold medals on the Beach Pro Tour, at the Stare Jablonki Challenge and at the Brno Futures.
Pool B
A mouth-watering encounter between the arguably two best teams in the world will be in the Pool B spotlight. On one side of that titanic clash will be Sweden’s David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig. The reigning Olympic champions, current number one team in the World Ranking and defending Doha Finals title-holders will be the youngest players in Qatar. Hellvig is 23 years old, while Ahman is only 22. In addition to the Olympics, in 2024, the Swedish jump-setters triumphed at four Elite16 events – Tepic, Espinho, Ostrava and Gstaad – and took silver in Doha and bronze in Joao Pessoa.
In a mighty Scandinavian battle, Ahman & Hellvig will be challenged by the previous Olympic champions from Tokyo, former world champions, former European champions and former number one team in the World Ranking Anders Mol & Christian Sorum. It will be a remake of last year’s final, when the Norwegians settled for silver. They will be looking for vengeance as the world’s current number two team. Their impressive 2024 Elite16 collection features gold medals from Vienna, Hamburg and Joao Pessoa and bronze medals from Doha and Gstaad, in addition to the Olympic bronze from Paris.
The Netherlands is the only country with two representatives in the men’s Doha Finals. Paris Olympians Steven van de Velde & Matthew Immers will represent the nation in Pool B. The world’s current number five team’s best result of the year was the second place at the Brasilia Elite16, where they lost the final to Brazil’s Evandro Oliveira & Arthur Mariano, whom they are going to meet again in Doha. 2017 world champion and three-time Olympian Evandro and his teammate Arthur are ranked seventh in the world. In addition to the Brasilia gold, in 2024 they earned gold at the Recife Challenge and bronze at the Guadalajara Challenge.
The Pool B line-up is completed by English wild cards Joaquin Bello & Javier Bello, who recently triumphed with their first-ever Beach Pro Tour gold, at the Rio Elite16 last month. The twins also picked up bronze medals at the Recife Challenge in March and at the Nuvali Challenge last week and are currently in a career-high 16th place in the World Ranking.
