2019-06-14 13:00:00 CEST
The week in the sands of the world
Italian Olympic silver medalists Lupo/Nicolai returned to the World Tour for the first time in three months in Warsaw
We’re almost there! We’re exactly two weeks away from the moment we all have been waiting for the last two years, the start of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships Hamburg 2019 presented by comdirect and ALDI Nord.
Until the elusive June 28 comes around, the stars of our sports keep fine tuning their games in tournaments around the globe.
Join us and find out what they’re up for this weekend:
World Tour in Poland and Greece
Europe is on double World Tour duty this week as it hosts a four-star event in Warsaw, Poland, and a one-star tournament at the Ios Island, in Greece. A total of 124 World Championships-bound athletes are competing at the Polish capital this weekend, including Italians Daniele Lupo and Paolo Nicolai.
There are some notable absences, such as Americans Kerri Walsh Jennings and Brooke Sweat, Dutch Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen, Brazilians Fernanda Berti and Barbara Seixas and Polish Bartosz Losiak, but don’t worry, we checked on all of them and they’ll be good to for Hamburg!
Germans Margareta Kozuch and Laura Ludwig are shaping their games for the World Championships (Photocredit: FIVB)
National Tours in Germany and the Netherlands
Some teams chose to finish their preparations for the World Champs on their home sand and they’ll use their National Tours to do so. That’s the case with Germans Kim Behrens and Cinja Tillmann, who will compete in Dresden, the fourth stage for the national tour. Belgians Dries Koekelkoeren and Tom van Walle will go slightly across the border to take part in the sixth event of the Dutch Tour.
Belgians Tom van Walle and Dries Koekelkoeren will compete in the Dutch Tour this week
European Under-18 Championships in Austria
New European Under-18 champions will be also crowned as the town of Baden, in Austria, will host the tournament, which will feature 32 teams in each gender, this weekend. Among the competitors is Russian rising star Mariia Bocharova, a 2018 Youth Olympics and Under-19 world champion who will try to regain the continent’s Under-18 title after taking silver last year.
Russian Mariia Bocharova is looking to add another youth title in her career this weekend (Photocredit: FIVB)
Social Media: The veterans have still got it
Beach legends Ricardo Santos of Brazil and Sean Rosenthal of the United States won’t be at this year’s World Championships, but it definitely won’t be for lack of talent. Just take a look at what they did last week against Jake Gibb and Taylor Crabb at the American AVP.
In case you missed it
Full World Champs schedule released
Hamburg preview for women’s pools A, B & C
Russians Stoyanovskiy and Krasilnikov are ready for the Vikings
See you next week!