Beach Shorts: The week in the sands of the world

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Australia's Louise Bawden announced her retirement from beach volleyball

Welcome to the third edition of Beach Shorts! Our weekly column is back bringing to you everything that happened in the sands of the word over the last few days. This week we have a player announcing her retirement, news about some of the most relevant continental tours and, don’t miss it, an indefectible way to block ‘The Thin Beast’ Phil Dalhausser.

Have fun!

Bye, Bawden!

Australia’s three-time Olympian Louise Bawden announced her retirement at the age of 36. The left-handed blocked started her career in volleyball and competed in the 2000 Sydney Olympics before making her transition to the beach in 2009, when she was the World Tour’s Rookie of the Year.

Over 10 seasons, Badwen competed in 91 international events, including the last two Olympics and the last four World Championships. She won one silver and two bronze medals in her career. “While my career was not defined by the elusive gold medal, I am extremely proud of the progress I made as an athlete, the standards I held myself to, my commitment to learn and the reputation I built internationally as a hard worker and a fighter on the court,” she said in a statement.

European Championships officially launched

The Netherlands will host the 2018 edition of the Beach Volleyball European Championships and the event was officially launched this week. The tournament will take place from July 15-22 and will be part of a big volleyball week in the country, which will be hosting both the indoor Under-20 Men’s European Championships and the Sitting Volleyball World Championships at the same time.

The matches will take place in four cities – The Hague, Rotterdam, Utrecht and Apeldoorn – and former World Tour players Reinder Nummerdor, Richard Schuil and Rebekka Kadijk will be ambassadors of the event that will reunite the best 32 male and female teams of the continent. 

Dutch start Reinder Nummerdor is one of the ambassadors of the 2018 European Championships (Photocredit: CEV)

South American Tour heads to Chile

After stops in Brazil and Argentina over the last weeks, the South American Tour now heads to Chile as the city of Coquimbo will host the third event of the season from Friday to Sunday. Brazil leads both men and women’s ranking after the two first tournaments.

The tournament will feature some teams that will be competing in the Fort Lauderdale Major in ten days, such as Chilean home favorites Marco and Esteban Grimalt and Brazilian young women’s team of Ana Patrícia Ramos and Rebecca Silva. 

The Grimalt cousins Esteban (left) and Marco will try to prevail at home in the South American Tour (Photocredit: FIVB)

Social Media: How to stop Phil Dalhausser

And our social media hero of the week in American Jake Gibb, who figured out a way to block Phil Dalhausser and shared it with us. Click here!

You never thought it could be so simple, did you?

In case you missed it

Here are the most important beach volleyball news of the week:

Meet the golden oldies of beach volleyball

Can Alvaro and Saymon do it again in Fort Lauderdale?

Alison and Bruno want to bounce back in 2018
 

See you next week!