Lausanne, Switzerland, September 11, 2015 - Moving another step closer to the start of the history-making event, the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB), international governing body for the Olympic sport of beach volleyball, has announced the team pool assignments for the inaugural double-gender $500,000 Swatch FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Finals in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. (USA) to be held September 29-October 4.
Continuing to introduce innovations and dynamic expression into the framework of professional beach volleyball, a $500,000 total purse will be awarded for the spectacular tournament. The sport’s newest event will feature the top eight point leaders from the 2015 FIVB World Tour plus two wild cards in each gender. The tournament will have a special format with the winning team in each gender taking home a FIVB-record $100,000 gold medal prize.
USA trifectaThe Fort Lauderdale event will be the last of three double-gender FIVB international tournaments to be held in the United States in 2015. The other two stops in the United States in 2015 were the FIVB St. Petersburg Grand Slam in Florida (June 17-21) and the FIVB Long Beach Grand Slam in Southern California (August 18-23).
DetailsThe 10 teams in each gender have been placed into two pools of five teams each for round-robin pool play for the first four days of the event. The top three teams in each pool with then advance to the single-elimination ‘knockout’ rounds with the top team in each pool advancing directly to the semifinals with the other two meeting in quarterfinal matches.
Included in the field are eight men who are Olympians and nine women who are Olympians. Additionally, there are two men’s teams and two additional men players and one team and three additional women players who have netted gold medals at the FIVB World Championships.
The weekendThe women’s quarterfinals will be played on Friday (October 2) and the men’s on Saturday (October 3). The semifinals will be played on Saturday (October 3) and the medal matches on Sunday (October 4). The internationally televised event will be held on a purpose-built site at the Fort Lauderdale Beach Park.
Men's Pool ABreaking down the teams by pool, Men’s Pool A will consist of USA’s top-seeded Jake Gibb/Casey Patterson, the Netherlands' fourth-seeded Alexander Brower/Robert Meeuwsen, Brazil’s fifth-seeded Evandro Goncalves/Pedro Solberg, Spain’s eighth-seeded Adrian Gavira/Pablo Herrera and Italy’s ninth-seeded Adrian Carambula/Alex Ranghieri.
Men's Pool BCompeting in Men’s Pool B will be Brazil’s second-seeded Alison Cerutti/Bruno Oscar Schmidt, the Netherlands’ third-seeded Reinder Nummerdor/Christiaan Varenhorst, Canada’s sixth-seeded Ben Saxton/Chaim Schalk, Austria’s seventh-seeded Clemens Doppler/Alexander Horst and USA’s 10th-seeded Phil Dalhausser/Nick Lucena.
Women's Pool AOn the women’s side, in Women’s Pool A will be USA’s top-seeded Lauren Fendrick/April Ross, Brazil’s fourth-seeded Agatha Bednarczuk/Barbara Seixas, Germany’s fifth-seeded Laura Ludwig/Kira Walkenhorst, Spain’s eighth-seeded Elsa Baquerizo/Liliana Fernandez and Canada’s ninth-seeded Jamie Broder/Kristina Valjas.
Women's Pool BThe group for Women’s Pool B will be Brazil’s second-seeded Talita Antunes/Larissa Franca, Canada’s third-seeded Heather Bansley/Sarah Pavan, Netherlands’ sixth-seeded Madelein Meppelink/Marleen Van Iersel, USA’s seventh-seeded Emily Day/Jennifer Kessy and Germany’s 10th-seeded Chantal Laboureur/Julia Sude.
2015 FIVB World Tour breakdown
The 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar included five FIVB Grand Slams, the new FIVB Swatch Major Series of three events, six FIVB Opens and the special Swatch FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Finals in the United States. A showcase event was the $1 million 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships in the Netherlands. All events, except the Swatch FIVB World Tour Finals, have 32-team main draw fields for each gender except the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships which had 48 men’s and 48 women’s duos.
USA history
Through this year’s Long Beach event, the United States has hosted a total of 24 FIVB World Tour events (13 men, 13 women) with the USA leading the men’s medal count and Brazil leading the women’s medal count. In the men’s totals after 13 events in the USA, the USA has 14 medals followed by Brazil with 12, Argentina, Norway, Spain and Switzerland with two each and with one men’s medal each in the USA are Canada, Italy, Netherlands and Poland.
After 13 FIVB World Tour women’s events held in the United States through this year’s Long Beach event, Brazil leads the medal parade with 20 total medals followed by the USA with 14, Australia and Germany with two each and with one women’s medal in the USA is the Slovak Republic.
About Fort Lauderdale
Fort Lauderdale is a U.S. city in the state of Florida in the Southeastern part of the country. It is located on the Atlantic coast, 23 miles (37 km) north of Miami As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 165,521. It is a principal city of the South Florida metropolitan area, which was home to 5,564,635 people at the 2010 census.
The city is a popular tourist destination, with an average year-round temperature of 75.5 F (24.2 C), and 3,000 hours of sunshine per year. Greater Fort Lauderdale which takes in all of Broward County hosted 12 million visitors in 2012, including 2.8 million international visitors. The district has 561 hotels and motels comprising nearly 35,000 rooms. Forty six cruise ships sailed from Port Everglades in 2012. Greater Fort Lauderdale has over 4,000 restaurants, 63 golf courses, 12 shopping malls, 16 museums, 132 nightclubs, 278 parkland campsites, and 100 marinas housing 45,000 resident yachts.