Tomorrow, the 18th September marks the start of the FIVB Beach Volleyball Tokyo Olympic Qualification tournament. Haiyang, China is hosting 16 best beach volleyball nations in each gender. MEVZA will be represented by a total of four teams, a couple from both Austria and Czech Republic.
Photo: FIVB
Austrians Katharina Schützenhöfer, Lena Plesiutschnig and the Czech’s Marketa Slukova, Barbora Hermannova are in the same pool (A), which means that they could face each other already in their second match. Host China and Russia will be their opponents in the first round.
On the men’s side we will see the Austrian duo Robin Seidl, Philipp Waller go against Norway and the Czechs Ondrej Perusic, David Schweiner against Qatar in their opening matches.
Photo: FIVB
For this special event, there is also a unique format with three stages of pool play to determine the finalists.
A total of 16 teams is split into four pools. As usual on the World Tour, modified pool play will determine the three teams to advance to the second round.
There, 12 teams are divided into pools with three teams each. Every pool advances the top two to the third round.
Eight remaining teams in two pools determine the four finalists, who will play a couple of finals for a couple of Tokyo 2020 Olympic berths.
Photo: FIVB
Schedule:
Women:
Slukova/Hermannova (CZE) – Voronina/Bocharova (RUS) 2:30 am (CET)
Schützenhöfer/Plesiutschnig (AUT) – Wang/X.Y.Xia (CHN) 3:00 am (CET)
Men:
Seidl/Waller (AUT) – Berntsen/Mol H. (NOR) 2:30 am (CET)
Perusic/Schweiner (CZE) – Ahmed/Cherif (QAT) 4:20 am (CET)
Official tournament website:
http://beachvolleyball.ioqt.2019.fivb.com/en
Photo credit: FIVB
