09/01/2015 14:56
CEV releases tentative calendar for another record-breaking Beach Volleyball season
News from the CEV
Luxembourg, January 9, 2015. Though winter has finally come and snow has been falling almost all over Europe, Beach Volleyball fans can already start looking forward to a 2015 season that will be packed with a series of high-class events and as many as 19 tournaments as per the tentative calendar published today by CEV. The climax will be reached once 32 teams per gender – maximum two per country – will travel to Baku for the Beach Volleyball event of the inaugural European Games (June 16-21) and then from July 28 through August 2 as Austria’s largest sandbox in Klagenfurt will re-open its doors for the 2015 edition of the CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship Final. More events may be added to this tentative calendar as CEV is currently negotiating with other potential organisers.
Click here to download a PDF version of the calendar
As per the current tentative calendar, the 2015 season will get started in early May with eight double-gender tournaments on schedule for the 3rd Round of the 2014-2016 CEV Beach Volleyball Continental Cup. 32 National Federations will be involved in these tournaments, including the top eight from the CEV Country Ranking that had the privilege to skip the first and second rounds organised in 2014. This way European teams will continue to chase their Olympic dream since the eventual winners of the CEV Beach Volleyball Continental Cup Final coming up in 2016 will get the right to compete at the Olympic tournament on the beach of Copacabana in Rio de Janeiro.
The 2015 CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship will then get underway on May 21-24 with the Jurmala Masters: Latvia’s most popular seaside resort already played host to a very successful Satellite tournament in August 2014 and this time around it will welcome Europe’s Beach Volleyball elite for the first event of that calibre to be organised in any of the Baltic countries. Beach Volleyball has become one of Latvia’s national sports after Martins Plavins and Janis Smedins won bronze at London 2012 before Smedins went on to win the 2013 and 2014 editions of the FIVB World Tour together with his current partner Aleksandrs Samoilovs and two silver medals at the 2013 and 2014 European Championships in Klagenfurt and Cagliari.
The Austrian city of Baden, in the outskirts of Vienna, will host a double gender Masters tournament for the third consecutive year thereby prolonging a success story that started already in 2011 with a double-gender Satellite event. The event will be a perfect rehearsal especially for the Austrian teams, including last year’s silver medallists Clemens Doppler and Alexander Horst, on their way to the much anticipated home European Championship in Klagenfurt.
The 2015 edition of the CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship currently includes four stops: apart from the Masters in Jurmala and Baden and the Final in Klagenfurt, Biel/Bienne (SUI) will be hosting a top-level tournament for the second consecutive year through August 5-9 at the great venue set up on Lake Geneva before this city welcomes Europe’s elite of the sport for the 2016 edition of the CEV Beach Volleyball European Championship Final only a few weeks away from the Rio Olympics.
Elite Beach Volleyball is set to return once again also to Liechtenstein with the traditional Satellite tournament taking place in the capital of the alpine principality, Vaduz, being scheduled this year for early July (8-12). Two cities will be playing host to their first CEV Satellite events ever, with Molodechno in Belarus and Timisoara in Romania each set to host a women’s single-gender tournament in June and August respectively. Molodechno previously hosted the 2013 edition of the CEV U18 Beach Volleyball European Championship and is home to a permanent Beach Volleyball centre whereby Belarus is trying to grow its next generation of Beach Volleyball players. Timisoara, on the other hand, follows in the footsteps of another Romanian city, Constanta, which had hosted a CEV Satellite tournament back in 2010 and 2011. Timisoara, the main social, cultural and economic centre in western Romania, already hosted one stop of last year’s Balkan Beach Volleyball Championship as well as the 2014 U22 Balkan Championship.
As already announced before the Christmas holidays, Europe’s stars in the making will have their respective highlight later this summer with the U18, U20 and U22 European Champs set to take place in Riga (LAT), Paralimni (CYP) and Myslowice (POL), respectively.
“I am confident that 2015 will be another great year for Beach Volleyball in Europe,” says CEV President André Meyer. “We can’t wait for the major highlights of the season, the European Games in Baku and the European Championship Final in Klagenfurt which should help us raise the profile of our sport to unimaginable heights. However, I am particularly happy also with the addition of more events and countries to our portfolio which testifies that Beach Volleyball keeps on growing all over Europe also via the extensive work we are doing to promote it at the grass-roots level. I invite all Beach Volleyball fans to get ready for a memorable season and look forward to seeing many of you at one of our fabulous events!”
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