Who’s who of beach volleyball head to Russia

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Swiss hopes in Sochi rest on the shoulders of Joana Heidrich and Nadine Zumkehr (here at Gstaad Major 2015) who won bronze last year. Photo credit: Samo Vidic.

Sochi’s reputation as one of the coolest destinations for world sport continues this week as a stunning line-up of beach volleyball stars hit the popular Russian hotspot.

The host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics and the Russian Grand Prix again hosts one of Russia’s most prestigious beach volleyball tournaments with the Sochi Open throwing its doors open on Tuesday.

And the list of entries reads as a mouth-watering who’s who of the world’s highest profile beach volleyball players, with the gold medalists from last year’s tournament both desperate to regain their titles.

However, Latvians Janis Smedins and Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Italy’s Marta Menegatti and Viktoria Orsi Toth, winners 12 months ago, face a tough challenge in their quest to top the podium for a second successive year.

With so much competition this time round, predicting the destination of gold seems about as easy as picking next week’s lottery numbers. For the players it’ll be tough. But for us that means some darn good volleyball to feast our eyes on.

Take the men for example: last year’s fourth-placed Russians Viachesleav Krasilnikov and Konstantin Semenov will be strong favorites on home sand, while silver medalists at Fortaleza, Jonathan Erdmann and Kay Matysik, will want to go one medal better this week.

Then chuck forward the chances of Olympic hopefuls Daniele Lupo/Paolo Nicolai (ITA), Alex Ranghieri/Adrian Caramabula (ITA), Spaniards Pablo Herrera/Adrian Gavira and Clemens Doppler/Alexander Horst of Austria. Yes, they are all in the draw, too.

It’s the same story with the women. With the likes of Joana Heidrich/Nadine Zumkehr (SUI), Linline Matauatu/Miller Pata (VAN), Ana Gallay/Georgina Klug (ARG), Fan Wang/Yuan Yue (CHN) and Karla Borger/Britta Büthe all in the draw how on earth are we going to call the winner?

Thankfully, our job is just to sit back, watch the action unfold and write about it. Even if reading back all of those names is exhausting in itself.

So join us, won’t you, this week as we follow the progress of the great and good in Sochi. And if you are reading this then it’s also probably, definitely, a good idea to subscribe to our new-look newsletter too. Switch your eyes to the right of these words and fill in your details!