Swiss looking for medals at home at Spiez Futures
News
Switzerland will make a strong push for medals on the Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour this week as the country welcomes a Futures tournament in Spiez from Wednesday to Sunday in which the host country will feature 11 teams.
Located just 40km south of the country’s capital Bern, the city of Spiez will have the center court set up at the Spiezer Bucht, right by the Thunersee Lake. The 56-team tournament – half in each gender - begins with the qualifier, which will determine the last four men’s and women’s teams that will take part in the main draw, which starts on Thursday. The medal matches will be held on Sunday.
As many as 13 European nations will take part in the women’s tournament in Spiez. Hosts Switzerland have six teams, followed by Czechia with four, Italy with three, Lithuania and Sweden with two and Austria, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, the Netherlands, Scotland and Ukraine with one each. Australia will have two teams and Canada one.
Fresh from helping Switzerland win the Pool B of the 2023 CEV Beach Volleyball Nations Cup two weeks ago, Menia Bentele and Anna Lutz will lead the Swiss team this week in Spiez. They are the second-best-seeded team in the tournament.
Their main opponents in Spiez should be top-seeded Australians Georgia Johnson and Jasmine Fleming and Ukrainians Diana Lunina and Tetiana Lazarenko, who took silver in the Madrid Futures. Another highlight of the event will be the participation of 52-year-old Scottish veteran Melissa Coutts, who forms the top-seeded team in the qualifier with partner Lynne Beattie, a London 2012 volleyball Olympian.
The men’s event will have more international representation with Australia having three teams in the tournament and Brazil, Egypt, New Zealand, Oman and the United States fielding one duo each.
The remaining 20 teams, however, hail from Europe, with hosts Switzerland having five duos, Germany having three, Austria and Poland two and Belgium, Czechia, England, Finland, Italy, Norway, Spain and Sweden being represented by one tandem.
Each of the main Swiss teams will be chasing medals this week in Spiez with Quentin Métral/Yves Haussener seeded first, Marco Krattiger/Florian Breer ranked third and Adrian Heidrich/Leo Dillier entering the tournament in 11th place.
Europe has two other teams in the top five, with Austrians Paul Pascariuc and Laurenz Leitner seeded fourth and Germans Simon Kulzer and Lorenz Momme ranking fifth.
The Beach Pro Tour Futures events in Europe are run by the CEV in close cooperation with Volleyball World and provide teams from the continent with several opportunities to compete and gain valuable ranking points during the Olympic qualification period for the Paris 2024 Games.