Xiamen, China, April 11, 2016 – The double-gender $150,000 FIVB Xiamen Open will kick off here on Tuesday with 26 men’s teams to vie for eight Main Draw tickets on offer at Gold Beach, Guanyinshan SimingDistrict, Xiamen.
The top six seeded tandems, namely Philip Gabathuler/Mirco Gerson of Switzerland, Thomas Kunert/Christoph Dressler from Austria, Norway’s Oivind Hordvik/Bjarte Usken, Nikita Liamin/Dmitri Barsouk of Russia and Poland’s Michal Bryl/Kacper Kujawiak, will have a bye in the first round of Tuesday’s qualification tournament while the other 20 teams need to win two matches in a row to reach the men’s Main Draw.
Twenty-four teams awaiting in the men’s Main Draw feature Latvia’s Aleksandrs and Janis Smedins, who finished third in Xiamen last year, and Italy’s Paolo Nicolai and Daniele Lupo, the 2014 Fuzhou Open champions.
Chen Cheng/Zhang Lizeng, Lin Wuqin/Lu Zequan and Dai Lingfei/Chen Zuhang will carry the hosts’ hopes in the men’s category.
The gold medal team at the FIVB Xiamen Open will split $11,000 and 500 points, the silver $8,000 and 450 points, the bronze $6,000 and 400 points.
Xiamen will welcome a FIVB World Tour event for the fourth consecutive year with the Chinese southeastern port city having also hosted a FIVB Grand Slam in 2013 and FIVB Opens in 2014 and 2015.
In addition to the FIVB Xiamen Open, the other stop scheduled in China in 2016 on the FIVB international schedule will be the double-gender FIVB Fuzhou Open, the week following Xiamen on April 19-23.
The 2015/2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar began with three Open events at the end of 2015. The remainder of the 2015/2016 calendar will include multiple FIVB Open and multiple FIVB Grand Slam events along with more Swatch FIVB Major Series events, and the second Swatch FIVB World Tour Finals. The highlight of the calendar will be the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil featuring 24 teams in each gender.
The event continues the road to Rio that lasts until June 13, 2016 with FIVB World Tour events counting towards the Olympic Ranking in order to determine the 15 of 24 spots for each gender that will take part in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.
The 2016 FIVB World Ranking system will again include FIVB Beach Volleyball Grand Slam and Open events along with additional pre-approved events at the inter-continental, continental and national levels.
The 2014-2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball Continental Cup is back again this year as it completes its portion of the qualification process for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil.