Lausanne, Switzerland, August 24, 2015 — After a second visit for this year to the United States last week, the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) now returns to Europe as the 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour continues Monday with the double-gender $800,000 FIVB Olsztyn Grand Slam in Poland, the last of five FIVB Grand Slams on this year’s schedule.
The internationally-televised FIVB Olsztyn Grand Slam will be the first FIVB World Tour visit to Olsztyn.
Visiting Poland for the 12th consecutive year, starting the FIVB Olsztyn Grand Slam will be 70 men’s teams from 28 countries along with 57 women’s teams from 28 countries.
OLSZTYN SCHEDULE
This week’s FIVB Olsztyn Grand Slam will start with quota playoffs for each gender, as needed, on Monday for women and Tuesday for men. On Tuesday there will be a one-day qualification tournament for women and Wednesday for men to determine the final eight spots in each gender’s 32-team main draw tournaments followed by round-robin pool play Wednesday and Thursday for women and Thursday and Friday for men. For the advancing 24 teams from pool play, the women will play their elimination rounds and quarterfinals on Friday and Saturday while the men will play their elimination and quarterfinal matches on Saturday.
On Saturday, the women will play their semifinals and medal matches. Sunday’s schedule for the final day of the tournament will have the men’s semifinals bronze and gold medal matches.
POLAND’S FIVB HISTORY
Through the 2014 event in Stare Jablonki, Poland has hosted a total of 24 FIVB World Tour events (13 men, 11 women) over an 11-year period with Brazil leading the medal count in both genders.
In the men’s totals after 13 events, Brazil has 14 medals, followed by the USA with seven, Germany with five each, Spain with three, Latvia with two and with one men’s medal each in Poland are Argentina, Australia, Austria, China, Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Switzerland.
After 11 FIVB World Tour women’s events held in Poland through 2014, Brazil leads the medal parade with 14 total medals followed by China and Germany with five each, USA with four, Italy with two and with one women’s medal each in Poland are Australia, Netherlands and Norway.
WELCOME TO OLSZTYN
Olsztyn is one of the most important cities in Poland. It is located at the North eastern part of the country of Poland. The city of Olsztyn was established in 1353 and has a population of just under 200,000. The area of the city covers 88.328 km (34.104 sq mi). Olsztyn is the capital of the Warmian-Masurian province in Poland. Olsztyn is immensely popular with the tourists from all over the world for the dense forests and the lakes situated in the region. Olsztyn is also famous for the lakes that are located in the city. There are 13 lakes in Olsztyn. The lakes in Olsztyn add to the beauty of the landscape of the region and also provide many activities for tourists.
TEAM POLAND
As the host nation for the FIVB Olsztyn Grand Slam, Poland has three men’s teams pre-seeded into the main draw and one more team in the qualification tournament. Poland’s main draw teams are provisional 12th-seeded Mariusz Prudel/Gregorz Fijalek, 19th-seeded Michal Kadziola/Jakub Szalankiewicz and 23rd-seeded Piotr Kantor/Bartosz Losiak.
Men’s team in the qualifier from Poland is 13th-seeded Maciej Kosiak/Maciej Rudol.
As the host nation, Poland has three women’s teams pre-seeded into the main draw and two teams in the women’s qualification tournament. Poland’s main draw teams are provisional 16th-seeded Monika Brzostek/Kinga Kolosinska, 23rd-seeded Aleksandra Stepien/Maria Wloch and 24th-seeded Martyna Kloda/Agata Trybula.
Women’s teams in the qualifier from Poland are Marta Pietroczuk/Paulina Stasiak and Agnieszka Adamek/Kinga Legieta.
TOP SEEDS
For the FIVB Olsztyn Grand Slam, preliminary revised top men’s seeds are, Brazil’s No. 1 newly crowned FIVB World Champions and winners of four straight events Alison Cerutti/Bruno Oscar Schmidt, Netherland’s No. 2 seeded Reinder Nummerdor/Christiaan Varenhorst, Brazil’s No. 3 Evandro Goncalves/Pedro Solberg, Netherland’s No. 4 Alexander Brouwer/RobMeeuwsen, Latvia’s No. 5 Latvia’s Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Martins Plavins, USA’s No. 6 seeded Jake Gibb/Casey Patterson, Brazil’s No. 7 Emanuel Rego/Ricardo Santos, Austria’s No. 8 Doppler Clemens/Alexander Horst, Canada’s No. 9 Chaim Schalk/Ben Saxton and Spain’s No. 10 Adrian Gavira/Pablo Herrera.
For the FIVB Olsztyn Grand Slam, preliminary revised top women’s seeds are Brazil’s No. 1 recently crowned FIVB World Champions Agatha Bednarczuk/Barbara Seixas, Brazil’s No. 2 Talita Antunes/Larissa Franca, Brazil’s No. 3 Maria Antonelli/Juliana Felisberta, Canada’s No. 4 Heather Bansley/Sarah Pavan, Netherlands’ No. 5 Madelein Meppelink/Marleen Van Iersel, Germany’s No. 6 Laura Ludwig/Kira Walkenhorst, Australia’s No. 7 Louise Bawden/Taliqua Clancy, Italy’s No. 8 Marta Menegatti/Viktoria Orsi Toth, Spain’s No. 9 Elsa Baquerizo/Liliana Fernandez and China’s No. 10 Fan Wang/Yuan Yue.
FIVB OLSZTYN GRAND SLAM PURSE
The gold medal team in each gender at the FIVB Olsztyn Grand Slam will split $57,000, the silver $43,000, the bronze $32,000 and fourth place $24,000.
FIVB WORLD TOUR PURSES
The FIVB Grand Slam and Swatch FIVB Major Series competitions, all double-gender each have $800,000 in total purses. The total purse FIVB World Championships the Netherlands 2015 will be $1,000,000 and $500,000 total for the Swatch FIVB World Tour Season Final which will feature the top eight teams and two wild card teams in each gender.
The 10 FIVB Open tournaments in 2015, eight double-gender, one men only and one women only, will have $150,000 total purses for the double gender events and $75,000 for the single-gender competitions.
GROWING HISTORY
The FIVB Olsztyn Grand Slam will be the 325th men’s event since the FIVB began men’s competition in 1987 and the 289th FIVB women’s tournament since they started in 1992.
ON THE HORIZON
This week’s annual visit to Poland for the double-gender $800,000 FIVB Olsztyn Grand Slam is the second of four straight double-gender events as the schedule has five events on tap in a six-week window. Following this event will be the $150,000 FIVB Rio Open in Brazil (Sept. 2-6), a test event of the 2016 beach volleyball Olympic venue at Copacabana Beach.
The FIVB Rio Open will be a 24-team event, per gender, that is the final qualifying event for the inaugural double-gender $500,000 Swatch 2015 FIVB World Tour Finals to held in the United States in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (Sept. 29-Oct. 4) for the top eight teams in each gender in the final 2015 FIVB World Tour Rankings plus two wild card teams will qualify for Fort Lauderdale. The gold medal teams in each gender at the Swatch 2015 FIVB World Tour Finals will each earn a FIVB $100,000 in prize money.
After Rio and prior to Fort Lauderdale, two double-gender $150,000 FIVB Opens, the FIVB Sochi Open in Russia (Sept. 8-13) and the FIVB Xiamen Open in China (Sept. 22-27) will be held, with placement points counting in the FIVB Olympic Rankings for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.