The 2019 World Championships will run from June 28 to July 7 at the Hamburg Rothenbaum Stadium with a total prize purse of $1.000.000. About 13.000 fans will follow the 48 teams per gender on centre court. New winner teams will be crowned as the defending champions teamed up with new partners. Current world champion Laura Ludwig (Germany) is playing with Maggie Kozuch after Kira Walkenhorst had to retire form professional beach volleyball in January. On the men’s side, defending champions Evandro and Andre Loyola (Brazil) have split up. While Evandro joined forces with Olympic champion Bruno Schmidt, Andre Loyola is now playing with George Wanderley after splitting from Alison.
The tournament schedule outlines pool play until July 3 in 12 pools of four teams with the top two teams from each pool going directly to the elimination round. They will be joined by the eight best third-ranked teams. These 32 teams will continue in single-elimination play with the medal matches being played on July 6 and 7. Top favorites are Norwegian Vikings Anders Mol and Christian Sorum who have already posted three 4-star wins this season at Itapema (Brazil), Jianjiang (China) and Ostrava (Czech Republic). They will play in Pool A.
Pools Men
Pools Women
The 2019 World Tour Finals in Rome will gather the planet’s best beach volleyball teams on the men’s and women’s side. The US$ 600,000 event will take place at the Foro Italico sports complex from September 4-8, 2019. It is the same site where all previous five FIVB World Tour events in Rome took place.
In contrast to the previous editions of the World Tour Finals, the Rome event will be played in a regular 5-star event format with 32 teams featured in the main draw. The event will also be part of the Olympic qualification process towards Tokyo 2020 with the winner earning 600 points. Prior to Wednesday’s qualifiers, country quota matches will take place on Tuesday afternoon for Austrian, Brazilian, Italian and US teams. Main draw starts on September 5, quarterfinals and semifinals will be played on September 7 and the finals on September 8.
In the men’s competition, all top teams from Europe, the US and Brazil will be participating. Norwegian Vikings Anders Mol and Christian Sorum are the defending champions and probably the top favorites while Russian world champions Krasilnikov/ Stoyanovskiy have been struggling recently. 2017 champions Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena (USA) are seeded 7th, last weekend’s AVP Chicago winners Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb are seeded 17th. Jake Gibb after the Chicago final:
“We are looking forward to Rome now. The Rome event site feels like a gladiator pit.”
On the women’s side, top-seeds are Canadian world champions Humana-Paredes/ Pavan and America’s A-Team Alix Klineman/ April Ross who already battled it out in the Hamburg world champs and the AVP Manhattan Beach finals. After losing the aformentioned matches to Canada, the A-Team took revenge last weekend and defeated the world champions in the AVP Chicago Gold Series Championships. Following the two top teams are Aussies Artacho/Clancy and the strong Brazilian teams. In Tuesday’s US country quota playoff Flint/ Day will face Sweat/Walsh Jennings.
Find the full entry list on the FIVB event page.
The first women’s World Tour stop is scheduled for this week in Siem Reap which is famous for its iconic temple Angkor Wat. It is Cambodia’s third straight season to host a World Tour event. Main draw in the Siem Reap 2-star event will start on Thursday, semifinals and medal matches will take place on Sunday.
Top-entries are Sara Hughes and Lauren Fendrick from the United States who just recently joined forces trying to make a last minute push for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics this summer. 2016 Olympian Lauren Fendrick has not competed for more than a year. Second-ranked are Futami/Hasegawa (Japan) followed by last year’s Sydney gold medalists Nicole Laird and Becchara Palmer. The Australians both have Olympic experience with Palmer competing in London 2012 and Laird in Rio 2016.
You can find the full schedule at the official FIVB event page.
