European beach volleyball teams know their opponents at Paris 2024
Olympics
The 26 European beach volleyball teams that will compete at the Paris 2024 Olympics from July 27 to August 10 are now aware of their opponents in the first round of the event after the Drawing of Lots was held in the French capital on Friday.
Europe will have more representatives than all four other Continental Confederations combined at the Games, while also accounting for half of the top-seeded teams in each of the 12 pools of the tournament.
The women’s tournament in Paris will have a pool fully composed by European tandems – Pool F, with France’s Alexia Richard/Lézana Placette, Switzerland’s Nina Brunner/Tanja Hüberli, Spain’s Daniela Álvarez/Tania Moreno and Germany’s Laura Ludwig/Louisa Lippmann. Pool C will feature three teams from the continent in Germany’s Cinja Tillmann/Svenja Müller, France’s Clémence Vieira/Aline Chamereau and Czechia’s Barbora Hermannová/Marie-Sára Štochlova.
Pools A (Italy’s Marta Menegatti/Valentina Gottardi and Spain’s Liliana Fernández/Paula Soria), D (Latvia’s Tina Graudina/Anastasija Samoilova and Switzerland’s Esmée Böbner/Zoé Vergé-Dépré) and E (the Netherlands’ Raisa Schoon/Katja Stam and Lithuania’s Monika Paulikiene/Aine Raupelyte) each include two European duos, while Pool B doesn’t present any teams from the continent.
Among the men, Pools B (Norway’s Anders Mol/Christian Sørum, the Netherlands’ Matthew Immers/Steven van de Velde and Italy’s Alex Ranghieri/Adrian Carambula), C (Germany’s Nils Ehlers/Clemens Wickler, Poland’s Michal Bryl/Bartosz Łosiak and France’s Julien Lyneel/Rémi Bassereau) and F (France’s Youssef Krou/Arnaud Gauthier-Rat, the Netherlands’ Stefan Boermans/Yorick de Groot and Spain’s Pablo Herrera/Adrián Gavira) have all strong European presence.
Pools A (Sweden’s David Åhman/Jonatan Hellvig and Italy’s Paolo Nicolai/Samuele Cottafava) and E (Czechia’s Ondrej Perusic/David Schweiner and Austria’s Julian Hörl/Alexander Horst) have two European duos each, while Pool D is entirely formed by duos from other continents.
In the first round, teams will play opponents inside their own pools, with the six pool winners and the six second-placed duos, as well as the two best-ranked third-placed tandems, advancing to the Round of 16. The remaining four third-placed teams will compete among themselves for the last two spots in the elimination round in a pair of “lucky loser” matches. From the Round of 16 on, the tournament continues in a single-elimination format.
The official match schedule for the Paris 2024 Olympics will be released next week.