World Champs bronze pushes Bryl and Łosiak into the qualification zone
Road to Paris
Few things will be more important in international beach volleyball in the next eight 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.
Even before the Olympic qualification period of the Paris 2024 Games started, beach volleyball players around the world circled the 2023 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships in their calendars as the event would not only reward the winners in both genders with direct Olympic spots to their countries, but also offer more Olympic Ranking points than any other tournament in the period.
Following the conclusion of the event in Mexico on Sunday, it’s easy to see that, outside of men’s champions Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner of Czechia and women’s gold medalists Kelly Cheng and Sara Hughes of the United States, who no longer have to worry about points, the biggest winners of the World Championships were Polish Michal Bryl and Bartosz Łosiak, who entered the qualification zone with their third-place finish in Mexico.
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.
The Polish were sidelined for more than two months, from the start of July to the end of September, after Bryl sustained a foot injury, missing two Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Elite16 and two Challenge events held in the period, which set them back in a strong way in their attempt to qualify.
The 1,280 points they earned with their third-place finish in Tlaxcala have fixed that, moving the Poles up to 13th place with 5,880 points, well inside the qualification zone. Bryl and Łosiak still have the ability to move up several spots over the next few months as they have only seven results accounted for, the least among the top 24 teams in the rankings.
The strong results obtained by European teams in Mexico also helped the continent dominate the top of the rankings as, while Olympic champions Anders Mol and Christian Sørum of Norway remain clear in first place with 9,460 points, the three teams right above them are also Europeans – Italy’s Paolo Nicolai/Samuele Cottafava and Germany’s Nils Ehlers/Clemens Wickler are tied for second (7,740) while Sweden’s David Åhman/Jonatan Helvig is fourth (7,720).
Five other European duos are inside the qualification zone, giving the continent ten tandems in position to qualify – the Netherlands’ Alexander Brouwer/Robert Meeusen (seventh - 6,960 points), Italy’s Adrian Carambula/Alex Ranghieri (eighth – 6,920), Spain’s Pablo Herrera/Adrián Gavira (tenth – 6,840), Austria’s Alexander Horst/Julian Hörl (12th – 6,100) and the Netherlands’ Matthew Immers/Steven van de Velde (15th – 5,680).
With the women’s rankings, even if no European teams made it to the podium in Mexico and positions didn’t change a lot following the update after the event, the continent also had reasons to celebrate as another team from the region entered the qualification.
With Cheng and Hughes no longer being capable of qualifying via the Olympic Rankings, French Lézana Placette and Alexia Richard, who were 17th in the tournament and collected 640 points, now occupy the 17th place in the rankings with 4,960 points.
Four European teams are in the Olympic Rankings top ten – the Netherlands’ Katja Stam/Raisa Schoon (fifth – 7,480 points), Italy’s Marta Menegatti/Valentina Gottardi (sixth – 7,440) and Switzerland’s Esmée Böbner/Zoé Vergé-Dépré (ninth – 6,640) and Nina Brunner/Tanja Hüberli (tenth – 6,340).
All next six spots in the Rankings are also occupied by European duos, giving the continent 11 of the 17 spots in play right now with Germany’s Svenja Müller/Cinja Tillmann (6,140), Latvia’s Tina Graudina/Anastasija Samoilova (6,100), Finland’s Taru Lathi/Niina Ahtiainen (5,380), Czechia’s Barbora Hermannová/Marie-Sara Štochlová (5,320), Austria’s Ronja Klinger/Dorina Klinger (5,020) and Poland’s Jagoda Gruszczynska/Aleksandra Wachowicz (4,980).
There could be some movement in the Olympic Rankings following the conclusion of this week’s Beach Pro Tour Challenge tournament in Goa, India, as several teams inside the qualification zone and others that want to get there will be in action.