Mol and Sunde hope to continue winning streak in Wilanow

Wilanow is set to become the second Polish city to host a Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Futures event in 2023 as the town located just outside the country’s capital Warsaw is ready to welcome a men’s tournament this week.

Matches will go on at the Plaza Wilanow from Thursday to Sunday and will reunite 28 teams from 17 countries. The women will play one week later, getting to compete from September 7-10.

The vast majority of teams entered in the tournament hail from Europe, with a pair of duos from Oman and one from Canada being the only exceptions. Poland (five teams), Lithuania (3), Norway (3), Czechia (2), Ukraine (2), England, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Monaco, Slovakia and Sweden will all be represented this week in Wilanow.

Leading the way among the European teams will be Markus Mol and Jo Sunde, who are seeded second in the event. The Norwegians head to Poland in excellent form, having won three of the last four tournaments they played at.

Since June, Mol, 21, and Sunde, 20, won the U22 EuroBeachVolley and Futures events held in Ios, Greece, and Brno, Czechia, this one last week. They also took bronze in Helsinki, Finland, at the start of July.

Two other European duos appear in the entry list top five – fourth-seeded Lithuanians Artur Vasiljev and Robert Juchnevic and fifth-seeded English Issa Batrane and Frederick Bialokoz. Seeded first and third are Oman’s Ahmed Alhousni/Haitham Alshereiqi and Nouh Al-Jalbubi/Mazin Alhashmi respectively.

Also starting the Wilanow Futures in the main draw will be Finland’s Santeri Siren/Jyrki Nurminen, Latvia’s Ardis Bedritis/Arturs Rinkevics, Poland’s Michal Korycki/Milosz Kruk, Filip Lejawa/Aleksander Czachorowski, Mateusz Florczyk/Artem Besarab and Piotr Groszek/Igor Ciemachowski and Lithuania’s Arnas Rumsevicius/Tomas Stasevicius.

Beach Pro Tour Wilanow Futures

Thursday’s qualifier will feature 16 teams and the four of them that go undefeated will advance to the main draw, which will begin on Friday, with pool play. The top three teams will advance to the elimination rounds, which will include the Round of 12, the quarterfinals, the semifinals and the medal matches.

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.