Luxembourg, Luxembourg, June 30, 2014.  After three consecutive weekends of action on the sand, the 1st Round of the 2014-2016 CEV Beach Volleyball Continental Cup is now completed.  The lineup for the 2nd Round has been settled, while 16 national teams per gender have found their way from the first round directly into the third.

34 national teams per gender took part in the eight tournaments held across the continent.  The 2014-2016 CEV Beach Volleyball Continental Cup went underway on June 15, 2014, in Portoroz (Slovenia) where the battles in Pool B were held.  The following weekend, four different venues – Bournemouth (England), Schinias (Greece), Kardzhali (Bulgaria) and Baku (Azerbaijan) – served as the arenas for exhilarating beach volleyball action in Pools D, E, G and H, respectively.  This past weekend, June 28 and 29, the Continental Cup fever spread further to Matosinhos (Portugal), Umag (Croatia) and Vilnius (Lithuania) with the exciting country vs. country match-ups in Pools A, C and F, before taking a break until later this summer when the 2nd Round of the competition will take place.

Two teams per gender from each pool qualified directly to the 3rd Round.  On the men’s side, the 16 national federations that succeeded are France, Belgium, Czech Republic, England, Greece, Estonia, Finland and Ukraine as pool winners, and Portugal, Norway, Denmark, Switzerland, Belarus, Cyprus, Serbia and Turkey as pool runners-up.  In 2015 they will join the men’s beach volleyball national teams of the Netherlands, Poland, Italy, Germany, Latvia, Spain, Austria and Russia, which, based on the CEV Country Ranking, will start their campaigns directly from the third round.

Similarly, on the women’s side, the best-ranked Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Italy, Russia, Switzerland, Czech Republic and Spain are already expecting the eight pool winners France, Norway, Poland, Sweden, Greece, Lithuania, Finland and Ukraine, and the eight runners-up Portugal, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, Belarus, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Israel from the first round.

These 24 teams per gender will be joined by yet another 8 coming from the second round, where the 18 teams that could not pass through the first round successfully will be competing.

The national federations of more developed beach volleyball nations see the Continental Cup as a great opportunity to earn the right of participating in the 2016 Olympic Games.  Those, whose chances of making it to Rio de Janeiro are very slim, view this competition as a great opportunity of their players to still feel the Olympic spirit by being a part of the Olympic process and at the same time to gain valuable international experience on the sand courts of Europe.  And to really young beach volleyball nations, such as Iceland, this is even an opportunity to write history.  Indeed, on Sunday morning, on the Atlantic coast of Portugal, the women’s Icelandic duo Elísabet Einarsdottir / Berglind Gígja Jonsdottir recorded the first set ever won by a team form the North Atlantic island nation in an official international beach volleyball competition.

Click here for more detailed information on the competition.