The week in the sands of the world

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Anders Mol and Nils Ringøen won their first match at the Oslo Open (Photocredit: FIVB)

In just ten days, the 2018-2019 World Tour season will be over. How crazy is that? It will come to an end with the World Tour Finals in Rome next week, but action won’t actually stop as the Olympic qualifier in China at the end of the month will keep some teams busy until the start of the next season.

Before Rome comes, though, there’s still a busy weekend ahead of us with World Tour events in Europe and National Championships and Continental Cup results from around the globe.

Join us and get all the information you need for the next couple of days:

World Tour in Norway and France

The World Tour continues this week just for the men with a pair of one-star events happening in Europe. One of them marks the return of Norway to the international calendar for the first time since 2015 as Oslo hosts an event which features world number ones Anders Mol and Christian Sørum in different teams. The other stop of the week is in Montpellier, France.

Montpellier is hosting a World Tour event for the third-straight season (Photocredit: FIVB)

National Tours in Germany, USA, Poland, Latvia and Switzerland

The weekend before the World Tour Finals also features some of the most relevant beach volleyball National Championships. Europe is pretty busy with the top German teams heading to Timmendorfer Strand, the Polish elite competing in Torun, Latvian stars fighting in Jurmala and the best of the best in Switzerland clashing in Bern. Across the Atlantic, the American AVP runs the Gold Series Championships in Chicago.

Olympic champion Laura Ludwig is in contention for the German title

China makes it to Asian Continental Cup Final Round

China is closer to securing spots in both genders at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics as the country the Phase 1 Eastern Zone of the Asian Continental Cup in Zhongwei. The victories of the men’s duos of Peng Gao/Yang Li and Jiaxin Wu/Likejiang Ha and the women’s tandems of Xinyi Xia/Fan Wang and Xinxin Wang/Chen Xue guaranteed the nation one berth in each gender in the Final Round, which will happen from June 22-28, 2020, and will determine Olympic spots for both men and women in the continent.

China defeated Japan in the final round in both genders (Photocredit: AVC)

Social Media: Water volleyball?

We already know it’s possible to play volleyball on hardwood, on the sand, on the grass and even on snow. But if you thought, you had seen every possible option already, think again.

 

 

 

 

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Volleyball On Water? Let’s Play! Three weeks before the start of EuroVolley 2019, the Slovenian capital hosted a real spectacle - a Volleyball match featuring former European stars played on the surface of the Ljubljanica River. In the city centre, ambassadors of the host countries for EuroVolley 2019, i.e. Dutchman Bas van de Goor, Belgium’s Frank Depestele, France’s Guillaume Samica and the Slovenian home hero Tomi Šmuc competed in a truly spectacular scenery. . . Read more on cev.eu 🎥 Branko Mihorko

A post shared by FIVB Volleyball (@volleyballworld) on Aug 23, 2019 at 9:15pm PDT

In case you missed it

Mol and Sørum on opposite sides in Oslo

Samoilovs and Smedins win World Tour home gold

Stoyanovskiy and Krasilnikov claim Russian title

See you next week!