Lausanne, Switzerland, July 22, 2016 — Following two weeks away from competition for the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB), the final Olympic preparations on the 2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour conclude along with the remaining stops on this season’s international tour. The 2016 FIVB World Tour continues starting Monday in Austria at the immensely popular double-gender $800,000 A1 Major Klagenfurt.
Quick links:A1 Major KlagenfurtMen - QualificationMen - Main drawWomen - QualificationWomen - Main drawPlaying in Austria for the only time this year following the Swatch FIVB Gstaad Major two weeks ago in Switzerland, there are 56 men’s teams from 34 countries and 56 women’s teams from 26 countries in Austria for the A1 Major Klagenfurt.
The A1 Major Klagenfurt starts Monday and concludes on Sunday. It is the 20th men’s event of the season and 17th women’s event on the 2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour that started with three events at the end of 2015.
KLAGENFURT SCHEDULE
The A1 Major Klagenfurt will have 32 main draw teams per gender. The format is the same for each gender with the women starting Monday and ending Saturday and the men staring on Tuesday and ending on Sunday.
Qualifying tournaments will be held on Tuesday for women and Wednesday for men to determine the final eight teams for each 32-team main draw. On Wednesday and Thursday for women and Thursday and Friday for men, teams will be split into eight, four-team pools to play three matches over the two days for each gender. The top three teams in the eight pools (24 total teams) will advance from pool play to the single-elimination knockout rounds.
On Thursday and Friday for women and Friday and Saturday for men, there will play three rounds of single-elimination.
On Saturday for women and Sunday for men at the A1 Major Klagenfurt, the semifinals and medal matches will be held. The awarding ceremonies will follow the gold medal match for each gender.
As needed, country quota playoff matches will be played on Monday for women and Tuesday for men to determine the final teams in their respective qualification tournaments.
SWATCH FIVB MAJOR SERIES
The Swatch FIVB Major Series portion of the 2016 FIVB World Tour features four events. Already played were events in Hamburg, Germany and Olsztyn, Poland, Poreč, Croatia and Gstaad, Switzerland. After this week’s Swatch FIVB Gstaad Major, the other tournament in this group of four will be held in Austria (Klagenfurt, July 27-31).
As part of the second season of the sponsor partnership, the Swatch FIVB Beach Volleyball Season Final will also be held again. Being held in Toronto, Canada, the finale will be held from September 13 to 18. The participants will compete for a total purse of $500,000 with the winning men and women’s tandems receiving $100,000 each.
AUSTRIA’S FIVB HISTORY
This year will be an unprecedented 18th time in the last 20 years that the Lake Wörthersee site has hosted the international circuit. While the men’s World Tour stop was held in Klagenfurt 16 straight times from 1997 through 2012 for this magical summer festival, the women’s World Tour was held in Klagenfurt for 12 consecutive years from 2001 through 2012.
A total of 30 previous FIVB World Tour events have been staged in Klagenfurt (17 men’s events, 13 women's). The 2001 event in Klagenfurt was the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships.
Through the last event in 2014, Austria has hosted a total of 30 FIVB World Tour events (17 men, 13 women-all in Klagenfurt) during a 18-year period with Brazil leading the medal count in both genders. In the men’s totals, Brazil has 25 medals, followed by the USA with nine, Germany with five, Netherlands and Norway with three each, Switzerland with two and with one men’s medal each in Klagenfurt are Argentina, Australia, Italy and Russia.
After 13 FIVB World Tour women’s events held in Klagenfurt, Austria through the 2014 event, Brazil leads the medal parade with 18 total medals followed by the USA with 11, Germany and China with four each, Netherlands with two and with one women’s medal in Klagenfurt are Czech Republic, Russia and Ukraine.
Men’s championship team of the 2014 FIVB Klagenfurt Grand Slam was Brazil’s Alison Cerutti/Oscar Bruno Schmidt. Winning the 2014 women’s gold medal in Klagenfurt was Brazil’s Talita Antunes/Larissa Franca.
WELCOME TO KLAGENFURT
Klagenfurt is the capital of the federal state of Carinthia in Austria. With a population of over 90,000, it is the sixth-largest city in the country. The city of Klagenfurt is located in southern Austria, midway across the nation, near the international border. It rests in the middle region, almost as far from Innsbruck, to the west, as from Vienna, to the northeast. Klagenfurt is elevated 446 meters (1,463 feet) above sea level. It is on the Wörthersee and on the Glan river.
The city is surrounded by several forest-covered hills and mountains with heights of up to 1,000m (3,300ft). To the south is the Karawanken mountain range, which separates Carinthia from Slovenia and Italy.
TOP SEEDS
Olympians abound as many Rio-bound beach volleyball teams are entered in this week’s A1 Major Klagenfurt in Austria.
The preliminary top-seeded men’s teams for the A1 Major Klagenfurt are Austria’s top-seeded Clemens Doppler/Alexander Horst, the Netherlands' second-seeded Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen, Canada’s third-seeded Chaim Schalk/Ben Saxton, Latvia’s fourth-seeded Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Janis Smedins and Russia’s fifth-seeded Konstantin Semenov/Viacheslav Krasilnikov.
The second-five preliminary men’s pre-seeds competing in the A1 Major Klagenfurt are the Netherlands’ sixth-seeded Reinder Nummerdor/Christiaan Varenhorst, Germany’s seventh-seeded Markus Bockermann/Lars Fluggen, USA’s eighth-seeded John Hyden/Tri Bourne and Brazil’s 10th-seeded Gustavo ‘Guto’ Carvalhaes/Saymon Santos.
For the A1 Major Klagenfurt, the top preliminary pre-seeded women’s teams are Germany’s top-seeded Laura Ludwig/Kira Walkenhorst, Poland’s second-seeded Kinga Kolosinska/Monika Brzostek, Germany’s third-seeded Karla Borger/Britta Buthe, Australia’s fourth-seeded Louise Bawden/Taliqua Clancy and Spain’s fifth-seeded Liliana Fernancez/Elsa Baquerizo.
The second-five preliminary pre-seeded women’s team competing in the A1 Major Klagenfurt are Switzerland’s sixth-seeded Joana Heidrich/Nadine Zumkehr, Switzerland’s seventh-seeded Isabelle Forrer/Anouk Verge-Depre, Germany’s eighth-seeded Chantal Laboureur/Julia Sude, Brazil’s ninth-seeded Juliana Felisberta/Taiana Lima and Czech Republic’s 10th-seeded Marketa Slukova/Barbora Hermannova.
A1 MAJOR KLAGENFURT PURSE/POINTS
The gold medal teams at the A1 Major Klagenfurt will split $57,000 and 800 points, the silver $43,000 and 720 points, the bronze $32,000 and 640 points and fourth place $24,000 and 560 points.
TEAM AUSTRIA
As the host nation for the A1 Major Klagenfurt, Austria has three men’s teams pre-seeded into the men’s main draw for this event and three more in the qualification tournament. Austria’s men’s main draw teams are top-seeded Clemens Doppler/Alexander Horst, 16th-seeded Alexander Huber/Robin Seidl and 22nd-seeded Thomas Kunert/Christoph Dressler.
Austria’s men’s qualification teams for this event are Martin Ermacora/Moritz Pristauz-Telsnigg, Daniel Mullner/Lorenz Petutschnig and Peter Eglseer/Florian Schnetzer.
As the host nation for the A1 Major Klagenfurt, Austria has three women’s teams pre-seeded into the women’s main draw for this event along with three teams in the women’s qualification tournament. Austria’s confirmed women’s main draw teams are 20th-seeded Stefanie Schwaiger/Barbara Hansel, 22nd-seeded Katharina Schutzenhofer/Lena Plesiutschnig and 24th-seeded twin sisters Nadine Strauss/Teresa Strauss.
Entered in the women’s qualification tournament from Austria are the teams of Cornelia Rimser/Katharina Almer, Valerie Teufl/Bianca Zass and Anja Dorfler/Julia Radl.
ON THE HORIZON
With qualification for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games fully completed from the FIVB World Tour and FIVB Continental Cup events, Brazil is hosting five international events in 2016. In addition to Maceió, Rio de Janeiro, Vitoria and Fortaleza, the Brazil events will be capped with the Rio 2016 Olympic Games (August 6 to 18).
After the Swatch FIVB Gstaad Major two weeks ago, the remaining 2016 FIVB World Tour event prior to the Rio Olympics will be one more event on the Swatch FIVB Major Series portion of the 2016 FIVB World Tour. Completing the four-event Swatch FIVB Major Series portion of the 2016 FIVB World Tour will be the A1 Major Klagenfurt event in Austria (July 26-31).
Following the Rio 2016 Olympic Games, there are two more events scheduled on the 2016 FIVB World Tour calendar. First event scheduled is the $800,000 FIVB Long Beach Grand Slam (Aug. 23-28) followed by the Swatch FIVB World Tour Finals (Sept. 13-18 in Toronto, Canada). The Swatch FIVB World Tour Finals will feature the top 12 teams on the FIVB World Tour (including two wild card teams per gender).
GROWING HISTORY
The A1 Major Klagenfurt in Austria will be the 349th men’s tournament since the FIVB began play in 1987 and the 310th FIVB women’s tournament since their competition started in 1992.
FIVB 2016
Based in Lausanne, Switzerland as the international governing body for the Olympic sports of beach volleyball and volleyball, the 2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball Calendar features a purse of $8.25 million with a season that extends from last October to this October, competing at 22 venues in 12 countries. The schedule includes four FIVB Grand Slams, four Swatch FIVB Major Series events, 13 FIVB Opens and the special Swatch FIVB World Tour Finals. The showcase event will be the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Brazil (August 6 to 18).
The 2015 portion of the 2016 FIVB World Tour calendar started in October in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico and included two more open events prior to the remainder of the schedule resuming at the FIVB Kish Island Open in Iran in February.
ROAD TO RIO
The Olympic qualification process began in 2015 with all FIVB World Tour events (except the Swatch FIVB World Tour Finals) in 2015 through June 12, 2016 counted towards the Olympic Ranking in order to determine 15 spots for each gender that will take part in each 24-team field in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games on Copacabana Beach in Brazil in August. Brazil also was awarded two additional spots in the field of 24, one in each gender as the host nation and the other as winning both the men and women’s gold medals in the 2015 FIVB World Championships in the Netherlands. With qualifying through the FIVB World Tour completed, the official drawing for pool assignments was made last Saturday in Switzerland at the Swatch FIVB Gstaad Major.
FIVB WORLD TOUR PURSES
The four FIVB Grand Slam and four Swatch FIVB Major Series competitions in 2016, all double-gender, each have $800,000 in total purses. The total of $500,000 will be the purse for the Swatch FIVB World Tour Season Final which will feature the top eight teams in each gender and two wild card teams.
The 13 FIVB Open tournaments on the 2016 calendar, 10 double-gender, and three men’s only, have $150,000 total purses for the double gender events and $75,000 for the single-gender competitions.
The gold medal teams in each gender at FIVB Grand Slam and Swatch FIVB Major Series events split $57,000, the silver $43,000, the bronze $32,000 and fourth place $24,000. The gold medal teams in each gender at FIVB Open tournaments each split $11,000, the silver $8,000, the bronze $6,000 and fourth place $4,500.
FIVB EVENT FORMAT
Implemented in 2013, the format of all the FIVB Beach Volleyball international tournaments – whether FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships, FIVB Beach Volleyball Grand Slam or FIVB Beach Volleyball Open – are the same, featuring pool play followed by single elimination knockout rounds. Country Quota playoffs returned as needed in 2015 to determine the final teams for the qualification tournament.