Enjoying a brief two-week respite from tournament competition, the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) resumes the qualifying process for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games through the 2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour.
A stretch of eight consecutive events begins Monday with the men’s $75,000 FIVB Qatar Open in Doha at the Qatar Beach Volleyball Academy in the Al Gharafa Sports Club. It is the third and final single-gender event on the 2016 FIVB World Tour schedule.
Quick links
• Qatar Open website
• Qualification
• Main draw
Returning to Doha for the third time, there are 69 men’s teams from 33 countries officially entered in the FIVB Qatar Open.
The men’s only $75,000 FIVB Qatar Open starts Monday and concludes on Friday. The event is the eighth event of the year on the 2015/2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour that began with three events at the end of 2015.
DOHA SCHEDULE
The FIVB Qatar Open is a men’s only event with 32 main draw teams. It will start with a qualification tournament on Monday to determine the final eight spots in the 32-team main draw followed by two days of round robin pool play. The top three teams in the eight pools (24 total teams) will advance from pool play to the single-elimination knockout rounds. Pool play will be held on Tuesday and Wednesday. On Wednesday and Thursday will be the single elimination rounds with the quarterfinals also on Thursday. The semifinals and medal matches and awarding ceremony will conclude the event on Friday evening.
As needed, country quota playoff matches will be played on Sunday to determine the final teams in Monday’s qualification tournament.
DOHA’S FIVB HISTORY
This week’s FIVB Qatar Open in Doha will be the third all-time men’s FIVB event in the country and the second in the 2015/2016 FIVB World Tour.
Winning the gold medal in last November’s event was Germany’s Markus Böckermann/Lars Flüggen, marking the second straight year that the event was won by a team from Germany. The United States claimed both silver and the bronze medals in November as USA’s Phil Dalhausser/Nick Lucena duo were second and third were USA’s John Hyden/Tri Bourne.
Winning the gold medal in the inaugural event in 2014 were Germany’s rookie team of Tim Holler/Jonas Schroder. The silver medal went to Canada’s Josh Binstock/Sam Schachter and the bronze medal was won by France’s Youssef Krou/Edouard Rowlandson.
WELCOME TO DOHA
Doha is the capital city of the state of Qatar. Located on the coast of the Persian Gulf, it has a population of over one million. Doha is Qatar’s largest city, with over 60 per cent of the nation’s population residing in Doha or its surrounding suburbs, and is also the economic center of the country. It is also one of the municipalities of Qatar.
The city of Doha held the 2006 Asian Games, which was the largest Asian Games ever held. Doha also hosted the 2011 Pan Arab Games and most of the games of the 2011 AFC Asian Cup. Doha will also host a large number of the venues for the 2022 FIFA World Cup. The World Petroleum Council held the 20th World Petroleum Conference in Doha in December 2011.
TOP SEEDS
Many Olympic hopefuls and some of the world’s best beach volleyball players are among the entries in this week’s FIVB Qatar Open in Doha.
The preliminary top 11 seeded men’s teams represent nine different countries led by USA’s top-seeded Jake Gibb/Casey Patterson. Austria’s Clemens Doppler/Alexander Horst duo are seeded second while third-seeded are Canada’s Chaim Schalk/Ben Saxton, followed by Poland’s fourth-seeded Grzegorz Fijalek/Mariusz Prudel and Russia’s fifth-seeded Konstantin Semenov/Viacheslav Kraslinikov.
The preliminary second-six pre-seeds competing in the FIVB Qatar Open are USA’s sixth-seeded John Hyden/Tri Bourne, Poland’s seventh-seeded Bartosz Losiak/Piotr Kantor, Qatar’s eighth-seeded Jefferson Pereira/Cherif Younousse, Italy’s ninth-seeded Alex Ranghieri/Adrian Carambula, Germany’s 10th-seeded Markus Böckermann/Lars Flüggen and Mexico’s 11th-seeded Juan Virgen/Lombardo Ontiveros.
FIVB QATAR OPEN PURSE/POINTS
The gold medal teams at the FIVB Qatar Open will split $11,000 and 500 points, the silver $8,000 and 450 points, the bronze $6,000 and 400 points and fourth place $4,500 and 450 points.
TEAM QATAR
As the host nation for the FIVB Qatar Open in Doha, Qatar has two men’s teams pre-seeded into the main draw for this event. Qatar’s men’s main draw teams are eighth-seeded Jefferson Pereira/Cherif Younousse and 24th-seeded Julio Cesar Do Nascimento Jr and Ahmed Tijan. Qatar’s surprising Jefferson/Cherif started 2016 by winning the gold medal at the FIVB Kish Island Open in Iran marking the first FIVB medals won by a team from Qatar.
ON THE HORIZON
With placement points for the FIVB Olympic Rankings for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games continuing, the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour is resuming with events over eight straight weeks through the end of May. In all, Brazil is hosting five international events in 2016. In addition to Maceió, Rio and Vitoria will be the FIVB Fortaleza Open (April 26-May 1) and the Brazil events conclude with the Rio 2016 Olympic Games (Aug. 6-18).
The FIVB World Tour now has three events in Asia starting with the men’s only FIVB Qatar Open in Doha (April 4-8). The tour continues with a pair of double gender events in China at the FIVB Xiamen Open (April 12-16) and the FIVB Fuzhou Open (April 19-23) before returning to Brazil for the FIVB Fortaleza Open.
GROWING HISTORY
The FIVB Qatar Open in Doha will be the 337th men’s tournament since the FIVB began play in 1987. There have been 298 FIVB women’s tournaments since they started competition in 1992.
FIVB 2016
Based in Lausanne, Switzerland as the international governing body for the Olympic sports of beach volleyball and volleyball, the 2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball calendar featured a purse of $8.8 million with a season that extended from last October to this October, competing at 23 venues in 13 countries. The schedule includes five FIVB Grand Slams, three Swatch FIVB Major Series events, 14 FIVB Opens and the special Swatch FIVB World Tour Finals. The showcase event will be the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil (Aug. 6-18).
The 2015 portion of the 2015/2016 FIVB World Tour calendar started last October in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and included two more open events prior to the remainder of the schedule resuming at the FIVB Kish Island Open in Iran in February of this year.
ROAD TO RIO
The Olympic qualification process began in 2015 with all FIVB World Tour events (except the Swatch FIVB World Tour Finals) in 2015 up until June 13, 2016 counting towards the Olympic Ranking in order to determine 15 spots for each gender that will take part in each 24-team field in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on Copacabana Beach in Brazil in August.
FIVB WORLD TOUR PURSES
The five FIVB Grand Slam and three Swatch FIVB Major Series competitions in 2016, all double-gender, each have $800,000 in total purses. The total of $500,000 will be the purse for the Swatch FIVB World Tour Season Final which will feature the top eight teams in each gender and two wild card teams.
The 14 FIVB Open tournaments on 2016 calendar, 11 double-gender, and three men’s only, have $150,000 total purses for the double gender events and $75,000 for the single-gender competitions.
The gold medal teams in each gender at FIVB Grand Slam and Swatch FIVB Major Series events split $57,000, the silver $43,000, the bronze $32,000 and fourth place $24,000. The gold medal teams in each gender at FIVB Open tournaments each split $11,000, the silver $8,000, the bronze $6,000 and fourth place $4,500.
FIVB EVENT FORMAT
Implemented in 2013, the format of all the FIVB Beach Volleyball international tournaments – whether FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships, FIVB Beach Volleyball Grand Slam or FIVB Beach Volleyball Open – are the same, featuring pool play followed by single elimination knockout rounds. Country Quota playoffs returned as needed in 2015 to determine the final teams for the qualification tournament.