Herrera and Gavira break into Olympic Ranking top four
Road to Paris
Few things will be more important in international beach volleyball in the next 12 months than qualifying for the Paris 2024 Olympics. The race to be a part of sports’ greatest event is always fascinating and generates endless interesting storylines involving the top teams in the world. We will be following the Olympic qualification process throughout the entire period and will also present some articles that will help you understand how it works and introduce you to some of the stars of the sport that will be chasing something special on their Road to Paris.
Spanish veterans Pablo Herrera and Adrián Gavira got one step closer to competing in their fourth Olympics as partners with their fifth-place finish in last week’s Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Challenge tournament held in Espinho, Portugal, as the result improved their position in the FIVB Olympic Rankings.
The rankings, which will determine 17 of the 24 teams that will compete in next year’s Paris Olympics, are formed by the total points earned by teams considering their best 12 results in international and continental tournaments played until June 10, 2024, when the 17 best-ranked men’s and women’s teams will secure a spot in the Games.
Herrera, who’s looking to make an unprecedented sixth Olympic appearance, and Gavira entered the tournament held at the Praia da Baía in ninth place in the Olympic Ranking, but the 600 points they won in Portugal moved them up to the fourth place, with 4,280 points. The move dropped European champions David Åhman and Jonatan Hellvig of Sweden, who didn’t play in Espinho, to fifth with the same total of the Spanish.
The top three remained unchanged, with Norwegians Anders Mol and Christian Sørum in first place with 5,700 points, followed by two Brazilian teams - Andre Loyola/George Wanderley, with 5,360, and Evandro Gonçalves/Arthur Lanci, who took bronze in Espinho and improved their total to 5,080.
Austrian Alexander Horst, 40, is another European veteran who also got closer to making his fourth Olympic appearance after partner Julian Hörl and him took silver in Portugal. The two gained six spots with the 760 points earned in Espinho, going to sixth with 4,100.
European teams occupy five of the remaining 11 spots in Paris via the Olympic rankings right now with Poland’s Michal Bryl/Bartosz Łosiak (eighth – 4,000 points), Germany’s Nils Ehlers/Clemens Wickler (ninth – 3,880), Italy’s Adrian Carambula/Alex Ranghieri (12th – 3,740), the Netherlands’ Steven van de Velde/Matthew Immers (15th – 3,600) and fellow Dutch Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeuwsen (17th – 3,340).
Among the women, Finland’s Taru Lahti and Niina Ahtiainen were the Europeans that benefited the most from their result in Espinho. With the 460 points earned with their ninth-place finish in Portugal, the two, who started the event in the qualifier, now stand at 3,820 and moved up from 12th to tenth place.
Two European teams that didn’t play in Portugal, Zoé Vergé-Dépré/Esmée Böbner and Tina Graudina/Anastasija Samoilova, lost just one spot each and managed to remain in the top ten after the event – the Swiss are eighth with 3,980 points and the Latvian European champions are ninth with 3,900.
Also inside the top-17 are Italy’s Marta Menegatti/Valentina Gottardi (11th – 3,780 points), the Netherlands’ Raisa Schoon/Katja Stam (12th – 3,760), Switzerland’s Tanja Hüberli/Nina Brunner (13th – 3,220), Czechia’s Barbora Hermannová/Marie-Sara Štochlová (14th – 3,200) and Spain’s Liliana Fernández/Paula Soria (16th – 3,100).
The race for a spot at the Paris 2024 Olympics continues this week with another Challenge tournament, this time in Edmonton, Canada, and the Rankings will be updated again after the conclusion of the event.