Beach Volleyball

Madrid Futures welcomes Beach Pro Tour into Europe

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Article Wed, May 11 2022
Author: Guilherme Torres

The Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour is coming to Europe and the Spanish capital of Madrid will be the first city in the continent to host an international beach volleyball tournament with this week’s men-only Futures event taking place between Thursday and Friday at the Puerta de Hierro Beach Volleyball centre.

Gavira and veteran partner Herrera are the best hopes of hosts Spain this week

This will be the first of 21 Futures scheduled to take place in Europe until the end of the year. These events will be run by the CEV in close cooperation with Volleyball World and will provide teams from the continent with several opportunities to compete and gain valuable ranking points.

Madrid has recently returned to hosting international tournaments and last year staged a Round 2 event of the Olympic-qualifying CEV Continental Cup and a women’s-only 1-Star World Tour competition.

This week’s event will feature 28 teams (12 guaranteed in the main draw and 16 that will start in the qualifier) from 17 nations, 15 of which are from Europe – hosts Spain, Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Serbia and Switzerland.

The event’s main attraction will be the presence of Spanish veterans Pablo Herrera and Adrian Gavira, who have represented their country in the last three Olympics.

“We’re happy to play an international tournament in Spain after so long. Madrid has been doing a great job in hosting events recently and we hope we can soon play a top-level tournament there. Pablo and I had a complicated preseason as he was recovering from knee surgery and it’s very important that we regain our match rhythm and our consistency as soon as possible. That’s something we’ll try to accomplish in Madrid this week.”

Adrian Gavira
Spanish Beach Volleyball Player

Other popular names set to compete this week in Madrid are Dutch Leon Luini and Ruben Penninga, who recently won a bronze medal in a Beach Pro Tour Challenge event in Itapema, Brazil, and Tokyo Olympic semifinalist Edgars Tocs, who’s now playing with 17-year-old Latvian partner Kristians Fokerots.

The competition starts on Thursday, with the 16-team qualifier, which will determine the last four teams to be a part of the main draw. The medal matches will take place on Sunday.

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