No shakeup among Olympic provisional men's leaders

Austrians Clemens Doppler and Alexander Horst satisfied the requirement for playing in at least 12-sanctioned qualifying events for the Rio Summer Games to move into the fourth spot on the ranking list among FIVB World Tour players excluding tandems for Beach Volleyball power Brazil.

Doppler and Horst placed ninth in Qatar Open in Doha last week by winning their first three matches in pool play before being upset in their second-round of elimination by Poland’s Michal Bryl and Kacper Kujawiak.  With the 240 points earned in Qatar, Doppler and Horst have 4,940 points for their 12 events to move ahead of Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Janis Smedins of Latvia (No. 5, 4,900).

With Doppler/Horst and Fijalek/Prudel scheduled to miss the Chinese and Brazilian stops, Samoilovs and Smedins have an opportunity to move ahead of the Austrians as the Latvians are entered in the Xiamen and Fuzhou events.  Samoilovs and Smedins will need to place fifth or higher in the two Chinese events to regain the fourth spot.

“After a short break, we’ll go for 10 days training in the Canary Islands and then we start the season completely prepared,” Doppler said.  “We’re trying to keep up the good work from last season because we had a very solid season and we’ve started this season with a fifth in Rio Grand Slam last month.”

 

“For us, the Qatar Open was a very important tournament since it was our 12th tournament so we have fulfilled the criteria for the qualification process,” said the 35-year old Doppler.  "We were also glad to play in Doha since there were night session games under the lights and deep sand.  It was important because you don’t have so many occasions in the season when you have night session games.”

Doppler and Horst played at the London 2012 Olympic Games after they qualified through the FIVB Continental Cup. The Austrians also played at the Beijing 2008 Summer Games with Doppler teaming with Peter Gartmayer and Horst with Florian Gosch.  Doppler also qualified with Nikolas Berger in 2004 for the Athens Olympics, but was sidelined due to a knee injury and replaced by Gosch.

To qualify for the Olympics, a team must compete together in at least 12 FIVB World Tour events and/or recognized Continental championships from January 2015 through June 13, 2016.  A team’s best 12 finishes will be used to determine a tandem’s ranking.  A maximum of two teams per country is allowed to compete in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Five pairs for each gender’s Olympic competition will qualify via Continental Cup action where each FIVB confederation is guaranteed a berth in the Rio 2016 Summer Games.  The last qualifying event will be July 6-10 when Russia hosts the FIVB World Continental Cup Olympic Qualification Tournament in Sochi.  The top two tandems from each gender from the Continental Cup qualifier will earn the last two pairs in the 24-team Olympic competitions.

Brazil has already qualified two teams in each gender’s competition for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.  Two pairs from the South American country captured the gold medals at the 2015 FIVB World Championships last July in The Hague (Alison Cerutti/Bruno Oscar Schmidt and Agatha Bednarczuk/Barbara Seixas) to secure Copacabana compartments.  Being the host of the Rio Summer Games, Brazil was guaranteed two teams in the 24-team men’s and women’s fields (Evandro Goncalves/Pedro Solberg and Talita Antunes/Larissa Franca).

With all that said, Brazilian pairs cannot qualify another team for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games through the FIVB World Tour.  Therefore, the ranking list excludes Brazilians in the ranking order as Alison/Bruno (7,050 points) and Evandro Pedro (6,130) are the top two teams on the men’s provisional points list for Rio.  Talita/Larissa (6,940) and Agatha/Barbara (6,870) rank 1-2 on the women’s provisional list.

Doha top four finishers Adrian Carambula/Alex Ranghieri of Italy, Alexander Huber/Robin Seidl of Austria, Piotr Kantor/Bartosz Losiak of Poland and Markus Bockermann/Lars Fluggen of Germany also improved their standing on the provisional ranking list for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Carambula and Ranghieri posted a 2-0 (21-17, 21-19) gold medal win in 37 minutes over Huber and Seidl to win their second title on the 2015-2016 FIVB World Tour calendar to move into the sixth spot on the ranking list (4,860 points).  Kantor and Losiak captured the Qatar bronze medal as Fluggen’s knee injury in the semi-final match with Bockermann against Huber and Seidl ended his tournament participation.

Kantor and Losiak are the top-ranked pair on the 2015-2016 FIVB World Tour with 2,920 points with Carambula and Ranghieri No. 2 (2,610) and Bockermann/Fluggen third (2,280).  All three teams have topped international podiums this season with Kantor and Losiak capturing the Rio Grand Slam last month on Copacabana where the 2016 Olympic Games will be played.

With a third place finish, Kantor and Losiak moved into the seventh spot (4,780) on the provisional Olympic ranking list ahead of compatriots Grzegorz Fijalek/Mariusz Prudel (4,720 points), who fell from the No. 5 to No. 8.  Fijalek and Prudel captured their pool in Qatar, but were ousted by Americans Jake Gibb and Casey Patterson in the second-round of elimination.

Gibb and Patterson finished fifth in Doha after being eliminated by Kantor and Losiak in the quarter-finals.  The Doha placement added 60 points to the Americans’ Olympic qualifying total (now 5,120 points) to rank third behind two pairs from The Netherlands - Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen (5,980) and Reinder Nummerdor/Christiaan Varenhorst (5,220).

For seven of the pairs, the Xiamen Open provides an opportunity to improve their point total as one of the top 15 teams on the current provisional rankings for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games as this week’s FIVB World Tour stop is the 23rdof 30 men’s events used in determining a spot in the Copacabana quadrennial.  Here is a breakdown to the seven ranked teams.

• Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Janis Smedins, Latvia, 5th, 4,900, 5th or better

• Adrian Carambula/Alex Ranghieri, Italy, 6th, 4860, 5th or better

• Adrian Gavira/Pablo Herrera, Spain, 9th, 4,660, 5th or better

• Ben Saxton/Chaim Schalk, Canada, 10th, 4,580, 9th or better

• Daniele Lupo/Paolo Nicolai, Italy, 12th, 4,550, 5th or better

• Viacheslav Krasilnikov/Konstantin Semenov, Russia, 14th, 4,350, 5th or better

• Lombardo Ontiveros/Juan Virgen, Mexico, 15th, 4,050, 5th or better

For nine of the Xiamen entrants, the China stop provides another opportunity to increase their Olympic point total to reach a spot among the top 15 teams from the FIVB World Tour.

• Josh Binstock/Sam Schachter, Canada, 16th, 3,740, 9th or better

• Youssef Krou/Edouard Rowlandson, France, 17th, 3,730, 9th or better

• Esteban Grimalt/Marco Grimalt, Chile, 18th, 3,650, 9th or better

• Murat Giginoglu/Volkan Gogtepe, Turkey, 20th, 3,400, 9th or better

• Martins Plavins/Haralds Regza, Latvia, 23rd, 2,730, will add 60 points with first serve

• Philip Gabathuler/Mirco Gerson, Switzerland, 24th, 2,380, will add 80 points with first serve

• Alexander Huber/Robin Seidl, Austria, 27th, 2,190, will add 40 points with first serve

• Christian Garcia/Francisco Alfredo Marco, Spain, 28th, 2,080, will add 80 points with first serve

One Xiamen entrants will automatically gain points as each duo has not reached the requirement to play in a minimum of 12 events.

• Jefferson Santos Pereira/Cherif Younousse, Qatar, 25th, 2,330, will add 120 points with first serve as the Xiamen Open is there 12th qualifying event

With a minimum of two teams per country in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games field, four Xiamen entrants will be seeking to improve their provisional point total.

• Tri Bourne/John Hyden, United States, 4,240, 9th or better

• Michal Kadziola/Jakub Szalankiewicz, Poland, 3,196, will add 120 points as the Xiamen Open is their 12th qualifying event

• Matteo Ingrosso/Paolo Ingrosso, Italy, 3,040 , 17th or better

• Grant O'Gorman/Sam Pedlow, Canada, 2,670, will add 40 points with first serve

Here is the schedule for the final seven qualifying events for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.  Each stop is a double gender tournaments highlighted by US$800,000 FIVB World Tour Grand Slam stops in Moscow and Hamburg.

• April 19-24 - Fuzhou (China) Open

• April 26-May 1 - Fortaleza (Brazil) Open

• May 3-8 - Sochi (Russia) Open

• May 10-15 - Antalya (Turkey) Open

• May 17-22 - Cincinnati (United States) Open

• May 24-29 - Moscow (Russia) Grand Slam

• June 7-12 - Hamburg (Germany) Grand Slam