Beach Shorts

Welcome to the second 2020 edition of Beach Shorts. We’re just fresh from the holidays, but don’t forget this in an Olympic year and thing will escalate fast when the World Tour season is up and running.

This week we had important news about how the Japanese Federation will select the country’s teams to the Olympics, a new coach for Samoilovs and Smedins and Swiss star Anouk Vergé-Dépré taking a challenge to another level.

Hop on and know all you need about beach volleyball for the week:

Japan announces Olympic trials

As the host country of this year’s Olympics, Japan is guaranteed a team in each gender of the beach volleyball tournament and the Japanese national federation announced the system that will determine which duos will occupy those spots. The country will run Olympic trials from May 23-24 which will have the six best-ranked women’s teams battling in Tokyo and the six men’s tandems with the most points clashing in Osaka. Both tournaments will be run in double elimination system.

Samoilovs and Smedins enter 2020 with a new coach

The Latvian duo of Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins returned to work in 2020 under new leadership as the team is now coached by veteran Italian Marco Solustri. The former World Tour player has coached duos from Italy, Germany, Russia, Austria and Japan and was recently working with Adrian Carambula and Enrico Rossi.

 

 

 

 

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Benvenuto Coach! We have officially started working together with Marco Solustri from Italy. 🏐🇮🇹🇱🇻 Our new head coach has a rich experience preparing teams from around the globe (Italy, Austria, Germany, Russia and Japan) that has included participation in Olympic Games and other high-level tournaments. As a player Marco Solustri was one of the pioneers of European beach volleyball in 80’s while since mid-90’s he has been sharing knowledge of the game as a coach. His teams have won Gold medals in European Championships (5x), been in the finals of World Championships once & have had success in FIVB World Tour as well.

A post shared by Samoilovs Smedins (@samoilovssmedins) on Jan 6, 2020 at 3:59am PST

World Tour moves to Oceania

The first event of the 2020 World Tour calendar is currently running in Iran, but the competition will move to Oceania next week as the Cook Islands will host their first-ever event, a men-only one-star tournament, from January 14-17. A total of 19 teams from nine different countries will compete for the medals in the first-ever event held in the continent outside Australia.

Social Media: Anouk’s life-risking skills in display

Several European beach volleyball players engaged this week in the #VolleyballSkillChallenge campaign, promoted by the continent’s Federation. No one, however, took it as seriously as Swiss star Anouk Vergé-Dépré, who, what can we say, put training partner’s Esmee Boebner’s life on the line to get it done.

 

 

 

 

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Here’s my #VolleyballSkillChallenge for the Volleyball Day on the 29th of February!! Who will try that one??? 😅 I nominate @beachteam_thole_wickler & @voley_playa_lili_elsa (as counter😜) to do the same😎 @cevolleyball #1MoreDay4Volleyball #thxesmeefortrustingme #beachvolleyball #challenge #swisshistory #esmeesidea

A post shared by Anouk Vergé-Dépré (@anoukvergedepre) on Jan 6, 2020 at 3:19am PST

In case you missed it

The Brazilian dominoes have fallen again

Brouwer and Meeuwsen start 2020 with a gold medal

See you next week!