Lausanne, Switzerland, September 20, 2015 — Beginning the grueling season in Fuzhou in April, now returning to China to end the regular season, the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) is in Xiamen as the 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour concludes this week with the double-gender $150,000 FIVB Xiamen Open. The third consecutive year for a FIVB World Tour stop in Xiamen, the event is being played at Guanyinshan Gold Beach.
With the FIVB World Tour visiting China for the 18th consecutive year for women, 12th for men and second time this season for both genders, starting the FIVB Xiamen Open will be 45 men’s teams from 22 countries along with 46 women’s teams from 22 countries.
The $150,000 FIVB Xiamen Open starts Monday and concludes on Sunday. The event is the second visit to China this year for the FIVB World Tour as the FIVB Fuzhou Open was held on April 21-26. This week’s tournament in China is the last of five double-gender events as the 2015 FIVB World Tour concludes with five events on tap in a six-week window.
Following this season-ending event will be the inaugural $500,000 Swatch FIVB World Tour Finals where 10 top teams in each gender will be competing in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., USA with the winning team in each gender earning a FIVB record purse of $100,000.
XIAMEN SCHEDULE
The FIVB Xiamen Open will be a 32-team, double-gender event. It will start with a qualification tournament for men on Tuesday and for women on Wednesday to determine the final eight spots in the 32-team main draw followed by two days of round robin pool play 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. Men’s pool play will be held Wednesday, Thursday with the round of 16 and quarterfinal elimination rounds on Friday, concluding on Saturday with the men’s semifinals and medal matches.
The women’s pool play matches will be played on Thursday and Friday with the first round of eliminations on Friday as well. The women’s quarterfinals will be held on Saturday and the event will conclude with the women’s semifinals and medal matches on Sunday.
As needed, country quota playoff matches will be played Monday for men and Tuesday for women.
CHINA’S FIVB HISTORY
Xiamen is one of eight Chinese cities to host an international FIVB beach volleyball event. Others have been Beijing, Dalian, Fuzhou, Lianyungang, Maoming, Sanya and Shanghai.
China has hosted 51 FIVB World Tour events through Fuzhou earlier this year, including 21 men’s and 30 women’s tournaments. Host country China has won 19 medals on its country’s soil, including two men’s silver medals, six women’s gold medals, seven women’s silver medals, and five women’s bronze medals.
In the 21 FIVB men’s events through Fuzhou in April, Brazil has the most men’s medals with 24, followed by Germany with eight, while the United States is third with seven, followed by Italy and the Netherlands with five each, Spain and Switzerland three each, China and France with two each and with one each men’s medal in China have been Argentina, Austria, Latvia and Russia.
Through 30 FIVB women’s events in China through Fuzhou in April, Brazil leads the medals race with 29 total followed by the United States with 23, China with 17, Germany with seven, Australia with four, Netherlands with three, Austria with two and with one each women’s medals in China are Canada, Italy, Norway, Spain and Switzerland.
WELCOME TO XIAMEN
Xiamen, also known as Amoy, is a major city on the southeast (Taiwan Strait) coast of the People's Republic of China. It is administered as a sub-provincial city of Fujian province with a population of 3.67 million.
Xiamen was a treaty port in the 19th century and one of the four original Special Economic Zones opened to foreign investment and trade when China began economic reforms in the early 1980s. In 2006, Xiamen was ranked as China's second "most suitable city for living", as well as China's "most romantic leisure city" in 2011.
TEAM CHINA
As the host nation for the FIVB Xiamen Open, China has three men’s teams pre-seeded into the main draw and two more teams in the qualification tournament. China’s main draw teams are provisional 22nd-seeded Jian Bao/Likejiang Ha, 23rd-seeded Jian Li/Zhouxin Li and 24th-seeded Jiaxin Wu/Lizeng Zhang. Men’s teams in the qualifier from China are Cheng Chen/Cong Yang and Peng Gao/Yang Li.
As the host nation, China has three women’s teams pre-seeded into the main draw and two teams in the women’s qualification tournament. China’s main draw teams are provisional top-seeded Fan Wang/Yuan Yue, 23rd-seeded Yuanyuan Ma/Xinyi Xia and 24th-seeded Ningya Tang/Yuanyuan Wang. Women’s teams in the qualifier from China are Chunxiz Chen/Zhaochen Wei/Jingjing Ding/Xinxin Wang.
TOP SEEDS
For the FIVB Xiamen Open, preliminary revised top men’s seeds are Latvia’s top-seeded Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Janis Smedins, USA’s No. 2 Phil Dalhausser/Nick Lucena, Poland’s No. 3 Piotr Kantor/Bartosz Losiak, Mexico’s No. 4 Lombardo Ontiveros/Juan Virgen and USA’s No. 5 Theo Brunner/Sean Rosenthal.
For the FIVB Xiamen Open, preliminary revised top women’s seeds are China’s top-seeded Wang/Yue, Germany’s No. 2 Katrin Holtwick/Ilka Semmler, Russia’s No. 3 Ekaterina Birlova/Evgeniya Ukolova, Italy’s No. 4 Marta Menegatti/Viktoria Orsi Toth and Switzerland’s No. 5 Isabelle Forrer/Aouk Verge-Depre.
FIVB XIAMEN OPEN PURSE
The gold medal team in each gender at the FIVB Xiamen Open will split $11,000, the silver $8,000, the bronze $6,000 and fourth place $4,500.
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 was $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 Xiamen Open will be the 328th men’s event since the FIVB began men’s competition in 1987 and the 292nd FIVB women’s tournament since they started in 1992.
ON THE HORIZON
After taking last week off, the FIVB World Tour is holding its final point event on the 2015 FIVB World Tour calendar this week at the double-gender $150,000 FIVB Xiamen Open.
The inaugural double-gender $500,000 Swatch 2015 FIVB World Tour Finals in the United States in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. for the top eight teams in each gender in the final 2015 FIVB World Tour Rankings plus two wild card teams will be held next week. The gold medal teams in each gender at the Swatch 2015 FIVB World Tour Finals will each earn a FIVB $100,000 record in prize money.
The week following Fort Lauderdale, the 2016 FIVB World Tour with placement points counting in the FIVB Olympic Rankings for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games will begin at the double-gender $150,000 FIVB Puerto Vallarta Open (Oct. 5-11) in Mexico.
FIVB WORLD TOUR BREAKDOWN
The 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour schedule will include five FIVB Grand Slams, the new Swatch FIVB Major Series of three events, seven FIVB Opens and a special Swatch FIVB World Tour Season Final in the United States. The showcase event was the $1 million 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships in the Netherlands (June 26-July 5).
A total of 15 countries will host events this year as the 2015 FIVB World Tour also begins the Olympic qualification process with all FIVB World Tour events (except the FIVB World Tour Finals) in 2015 up until June 13, 2016 counting towards the Olympic Ranking in order to determine 15 spots for each gender that will take part in each 24-team field in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
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 will return as needed in 2015 to determine the final teams for the qualification tournament.