BEACH ELITE READY TO ROCK THE ROTHENBAUM

Beach Pro Tour Elite16 event rocks up in Hamburg for a week of world class action in the German capital of beach volleyball

The fifth Elite16 stop on the inaugural Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour fully gets under way on Thursday inside the iconic Rothenbaum stadium in Hamburg, Germany.

Following the completion of Wednesday’s qualification matches, the best 16 beach volleyball teams in the world per gender now fight for the title at the home of beach volleyball in Germany.

Early start for top women’s teams

The women get Thursday’s main draw action started at 08:00 local time (06:00 GMT) with a Pool B clash between Brazil’s Talita Antunes/Rebecca Cavalcanti and USA’s Kelly Cheng/Betsi Flint opening the centre court for business.

In other exciting matches of the first day of women’s pool play, Brazil’s Barbara Seixas/Carol Solberg – silver medalists at Elite16 Gstaad – take on Germany’s Karla Borger/Julia Sude in Pool C at 11:00 (09:00), and the leading German pair, top-seeded Cinja Tillmann/Svenja Muller, the World Championship bronze medalistists, face Latvia’s Anastasija Kravcenoka/Tina Graudina in Pool A at 13:00 (11:00).

The evening session of the women’s tournament will feature the second leg matches in Pools A and D, with Tillmann and Müller back in action, this time taking on European champions Nina Brunner and Tanja Hüberli of Switzerland in what promises to be an mouthwatering clash on centre court.

Olympic champions meet familiar foes

Top-seeded world and newly-crowned Olympic champions Anders Mol and Christian Sørum of Norway will open Pool A with a head-to-head encounter with mighty Dutchmen Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen at 14:00 local time (12:00 GMT).

The first of the men’s main draw action begins at 09:00 local time (07:00 GMT) with the first round in all four pools and the second in Pools B and C. Czechia’s Ondrej Perusic/David Schweiner will get the action started with a Pool C game against Italy’s Adrian Carambula/Enrico Rossi. The Pool B programme will be highlighted by Brazilian world ranking leaders Andre Loyola Stein/George Wanderley’s matches against Austrian duo Phil Walle/Robin Seidl and Italian pair Paolo Nicolai/Samuele Cottafava, who have an Elite16 title to their name already this term.

Pool D will be the last to get underway, with home favourites Clemens Wickler and Nils Ehlers taking on World Championship silver medallists Renato Lima and Vitor Felipe of Brazil on centre court at 17:00 (15:00) in their first match on home sand.

Once the pool stage is completed on Friday, the winners and the runners-up of the four round-robin pools per gender will advance to Saturday’s knockout stage (quarterfinals and semifinals) of the tournament, which will determine the participants in Sunday’s medal matches for bronze and for gold.

Information and photo source : International Volleyball Federation