Just two weeks after the A1 Beach Pro Vienna 2024 in Vienna, the international beach volleyball elite will come together in Paris for the 2024 Olympic Games. The teams that qualified in the last Olympic cycle have now been confirmed.
In addition to the Tokyo 2020 gold medal winners Mol/Sørum from Norway, the reigning European champions Åhman/Hellvig have also qualified for the men's competition. The young Swedes have established themselves as a solid top team over the past two years. The reigning world champions Perusic/Schweiner from Czechia are also among the medal favorites. Other qualified teams are the Germans Ehlers/Wickler, the Dutch Boermans/de Groot and Immers/van de Velde as well as the Brazilians George/Andre and Evandro/Arthur, who have been at the top of the world rankings for years. The USA will be represented this year by the teams Partain/Benesh and Evans/Budinger. The Austrian duo Hörl/Horst have also qualified; it will be 41-year-old Horst's fourth participation in the Olympic Games.
In addition to the reigning world champions Hughes/Cheng from the USA, their compatriots and world number two Nuss/Kloth have also qualified for the women's event. In addition, Duda/Ana Patrícia from Brazil, who are ranked first in the world, and their colleagues Carol/Barbara have also secured a starting place. Other top international teams who will be competing for Olympic medals are X. Y. Xia/Xue from China, who have recently achieved top placings at Elite 16 tournaments, and Melissa/Brandie from Canada.
Some well-known European teams will also be represented in Paris. These include Stam/Schoon from the Netherlands, the reigning European champions Hüberli/Brunner and Esmée/Zoé from Switzerland, the team Tina/Anastasija from Latvia and the Italian duo Gottardi/Menegatti. Due to the limit of two teams per gender per country, Switzerland's Zoé Vergé-Dépré only recently had to beat her older sister Anouk to secure her slot for the tournament. The German teams Müller/Tillmann and Ludwig/Lippmann will also be competing, with Laura Ludwig, who already won an Olympic gold medal in 2016, being one of the most experienced Olympic participants. The young Spaniards Álvarez M/Moreno will be competing for an Olympic medal for the first time.
Brazil and the USA are among the most successful nations in beach volleyball, which has been an Olympic discipline since 1992, with a total of 24 out of a possible 42 Olympic medals. The A1 Beach Pro Vienna 2024, which takes place from July 9-14 at Vienna's Heumarkt, is the last trial of strength before the Olympics and will likely provide the first glimpse of the Olympic result, as many of the beach stars will not want to miss out on the highlight of the Beach Pro Tour in Vienna.
