2014 FIVB World Tour concludes in South Africa at $150,000 FIVB Mangaung Open

Mangaung, South Africa, December 7, 2014 - Returning to South Africa for the eighth time, the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) will conclude its 2014 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour with this week’s double-gender US$150,000 FIVB Mangaung Open. It is the first time the FIVB World Tour has held an event in Mangaung.

The 2014 FIVB World Tour finale is being held in Mangaung through Sunday at a purpose-built venue at the Rose Garden in Bloemfontein. On Tuesday, men and women’s qualification tournaments will be held to determine the final eight teams in each gender who will advance to Wednesday’s start of the 32-team men and women’s main draws.

The FIVB Mangaung Open is using the current FIVB format of a single-day qualification tournament on Tuesday. Round-robin, main draw pool play begins on Wednesday for both genders. It will conclude with a single-elimination bracket for the final 24 teams starting late Thursday. Elimination rounds will continue Friday, concluding with the quarterfinals in each gender. Saturday’s schedule will see both the men’s and women’s semifinals and Sunday’s final day will conclude with the medal matches in each gender to bring the curtain down on the dynamic 2014 FIVB World Tour season.

The total entry list for the 2014 FIVB Mangaung Open includes 53 men’s teams from 23 countries and 32 women’s teams from 16 countries selected by their respective national federations.

FIVB PURSE, TOURNEY TOTALS
The FIVB Mangaung Open is the 314th FIVB men’s tournament since its first event in 1987 and the 277th FIVB women’s tournament since the FIVB began women’s competitions in 1992. Gold medal winning teams in each gender in the  FIVB Mangaung Open will split $11,000, silver will receive $8,000, bronze medalists get $6,000 and the fourth place finishers will earn $4,500 of the $150,000 total purse.

TEAM SOUTH AFRICA
As the host nation, South Africa has three men’s and three women’s teams automatically pre-seeded into the main draw. For the men, the South African teams in the main draw are Grant Goldschmidt/Leo Williams, Jamaine Naidoo/Clinton Stemmet andColin Pocock/Casey Augoustides.

For the women, the pre-seeded main draw teams from South Africa are Sheana-Alice Abrahams/Liezle Peterson, Palesa Sekonyana/Randy Williams and Nicola Wenhold/Judith Augoustides.

Additionally, South Africa has two men’s teams and two women’s team in the respective qualification tournaments. The men’s qualification teams are Keifer Govender/Jerome Fredericks and Ivan Solomans/Sven Mollgaard. The two women’s teams are Anneta Frederiksen/Gadija Jappie and Simone Sittig/Luciana Pierangeli.

FIVB WORLD TOUR LEADERS
The top three teams in each gender at FIVB Open events receive 500, 450 and 400 points respectively on the 2014 FIVB World Tour. Latvia’s Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Janis Smedins is at the top of the men’s point leader board with 5,770 points. USA’s Phil Dalhausser/Sean Rosenthal duo, is second with 5,440 points in the men’s 2014 FIVB World Tour point standings followed by Brazil’s Alison Cerutti/Bruno Oscar Schmidt with 5,330, Poland’s Mariusz Prudel/Grzegorz Fijalek fourth with 4,600 and fifth is USA’s John Hyden/Tri Bourne with 4,280,.

In the 2014 FIVB World Tour men’s season earnings, the leading team continues to be USA’s Dalhausser/Rosenthal with $318,000 followed by Brazil’s Alison/Schmidt with $241,000, Poland’s Fijalek/Prudel third with $240,000, Latvia’s Samoilovs/J. Smedins fourth with $233,500 and Italy’s Daniele Lupo/Paulo Nicolai fifth with $187,000.

For the women, Brazil’s Juliana Felisberta/Maria Antonelli pair has clinched the 2014 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour championship with 6,740 points followed by Brazil’s Agatha Bednarczuk/Barbara Seixas with 5,660, USA’s April Ross/Kerri Walsh Jennings third with 5,420, China’s Fan Wang/Yuan Yue fourth with 4,950, the Netherlands' van Iersel/Meppeling fifth with 4,640, sixth is Germany’s Katrin Holtwick/Ilka Semmler with 4,610 and seventh is Germany’s Karla Borger/Britta Buthe with 4,580.

In the 2014 FIVB World Tour women’s season earnings, leading is USA’s A. Ross/Walsh Jennings with $282,000 followed by Brazil’s Brazil’s Juliana/Antonelli second with $261,375, Brazil’s Bednarczuk/Seixas third with $233,000, Germany’s Holtwick/Semmler fourth with $214,000 and Brazil’s Larissa France/Talita Antunes fifth with $210,000.

SOUTH AFRICAN HISTORY
Through to the 2013 event in Durban, South Africa has hosted a total of seven FIVB World Tour events (5 men, 2 women). In the men’s totals, Brazil has eight medals, followed by Latvia and the USA with two each and with one men’s medal each in South Africa are Argentina, Canada and Switzerland.

After two FIVB World Tour women’s events held in South Africa through 2013, Brazil and the USA are tied for the lead in the medal parade with two total medals each followed by China and Germany with one each.

Mangaung is one of just three South African cities to have hosted an international FIVB beach volleyball event. Besides Mangaung, the other cities in South Africa to host a FIVB World Tour event have been Cape Town and Durban. Cape Town has been the site of four FIVB world tour events while Durban has hosted the other three tournaments.

THIS IS MANGAUNG
Mangaung is the capital city of the Free State Province of South Africa; and, as the judicial capital of the nation, one of South Africa's three national capitals; the other two capitals are Cape Town, the legislative capital, and Pretoria, the administrative capital. Mangaung is popularly and poetically known as "the city of roses ", owing to the abundance of these flowers and the annual rose festival held there. The city's Sesotho name is Mangaung, meaning "place of cheetahs" and it has been included in the Mangaung Local Municipality since 2000. Mangaung is situated on dry grassland, at an altitude of 1,395 m (4,577 ft) above sea level. The city is home to 369,568 residents, while the Mangaung Local Municipality has a population of 645,455.

FIVB 2014
Based in Lausanne, Switzerland as the international governing body for the Olympic sports of Beach Volleyball and Volleyball, the 2014 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar features a record purse of US$9.6 million with a season that extends from late April to mid-December competing at 19 venues in 17 countries. This year’s FIVB World Tour includes a record 10 FIVB Grand Slam events and eight FIVB Open Tournaments throughout the world, helping expand the door for development of the sport even further.

The 10 FIVB Grand Slam competitions, all double-gender, have eight with $800,000 in total purses while both The Hague, Netherlands and the Long Beach, Calif., USA event had $1, 000,000 each in prize money, the most in FIVB Grand Slam history. The eight FIVB Open tournaments in 2014, six double-gender, one men only event and one women only event, have $150,000 total purses for the double gender events and $75,000 for the single-gender competitions.

NEXT GEN
As part of the initiatives of FIVB President Dr Ary S. Graça F° and his leadership team, the 2014 FIVB Beach Volleyball international calendar also included a record four age-group FIVB World Championships and the 2014 Nanjing (China) Youth Olympic Games Aug. 17-27).

Poland’s Maciej Kosiak/Maciej Rudol won the men’s gold medal for the home country and Australia’s Mariafe Artacho/Nicole Laird capturing the women’s gold medal for the second annual FIVB U23 World Championships in Myslowice, Poland. Capturing the gold medals in the inaugural FIVB U17 World Championships in Acapulco, Mexico were Switzerland’s Florian Breer/Yves Haussener and USA’s Morgan Martin/Kathryn Plummer. Winning the 14th FIVB U21 World Championships in Larnaka, Cyprus were Poland’s Michal Bryl/Kacper Kujawiak  and Canada’s Sophie Bukovec/Tiadora Miric. The 13th FIVB U19 World Championships in Porto Portugal were won by Brazil’s Arthur Mariano/George Wanderley for the men and in the women’s competition the winners were Brazil’s Andressa Cavalanti/Eduarda Lisboa.