Lucerne, Switzerland, May 12, 2015 - With the women playing qualifying matches here Tuesday in the inaugural FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Lucerne Open 2015, the first men’s teams took to the sand where pairs from Brazil, Canada, Latvia and the United States won Country Quota playoff matches on the Lake Lucerne Lido courts.
Tuesday’s winners will advance to Wednesday’s 32-team qualifier to determine the final eight spots for the 32-team Lucerne Open men’s Main Draw starting Thursday. The women’s “money rounds” begin Wednesday at 8 a.m. (local time) with 32 pool play matches slated. The men’s preliminary rounds are scheduled to start at 11:20 a.m. with another 24 matches scheduled.
The US$150,000 Lucerne Open is the second event on the 2015 FIVB World Tour as the international circuit played its first match last month in Fuzhou, China. This week’s double gender FIVB World Tour event is also the second event on the qualifying schedule for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
The final matches for both genders will be played Sunday on the Lido center court where the gold medal teams in each gender in the Lucerne Open will each split $11,000 first-place prize. Sunday’s schedule will feature the men’s semi-finals and medal matches along with the women’s podium placement contests.
MEN’S COUNTRY QUOTA WINNERS
Teams earning spots in the men’s qualifier Tuesday were Andre Loyola/Vinicius Rezende of Brazil, Daniel Dearing/Garrett May of Canada, Aleksandrs Solovejs/Ruslans Sorokins of Latvia and Hudson Bates/Derek Olson of the United States.
SWITZERLAND FIVB BEACH VOLLEYBALL HISTORY
While this is the FIVB World Tour’s first event on Lake Lucerne, the international circuit has a long history in the picturesque mountain village of Gstaad, Switzerland that dates back to 2000 for the women and 2001 for the men. Gstaad will host a SWATCH FIVB “Major Series” event for men and women July 7-12, a week after the conclusion of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships in The Netherlands.
ON THE HORIZON
Following this week’s play in Switzerland, the men take a week off while the women proceed to the Czech Republic for the US$75,000 Prague Open May 20-24. The men rejoin the women on the international circuit in Moscow May 26-31 for the first of five grand slam stops on the 2015 FIVB World Tour calendar.