With Beach Volleyball set to debut at next year’s Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, China, after missing out on the inaugural edition held in 2010 in Singapore, a total of 6 European teams per gender will be enjoying their “Olympic” debut come August 16, 2014. As pre-announced some weeks ago, Europe’s most promising duos will be going through a qualification process that does resemble what was put into place for the 2012 London Olympics.
The first stage of the inaugural CEV Beach Volleyball Youth Continental Cup is set to unfold this summer via the so-called Zonal Phase before continuing with the final round scheduled – though still tentatively – for May 2014 as entries for the Youth Olympics are to be submitted by June 8, 2014. The competition is open to players born between January 1, 1996 and December 31, 1999.
A total of 32 and 34 national federations did register for the boys’ and girls’ competition and were assigned to the various groups of the preliminary phase by taking into account a series of criteria, and namely their subdivision into four different geographical zones, the necessity to have 2 organizers per zone, and the 2013 CEV U18 Country Ranking.
The results of the Drawing of Lots performed this morning in Luxembourg City in presence of CEV President André Meyer read as follows (organizers in bold):
Zone 1
Pool A: Germany, Norway, Belgium, Iceland
Pool B: Czech Republic, Slovakia, Netherlands, England
Zone 2
Pool C: Spain, Italy, Switzerland, Malta, Serbia
Pool D: Austria, France, Portugal, Liechtenstein
Zone 3
Pool E: Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Hungary
Pool F: Latvia, Finland, Croatia, Belarus
Zone 4
Pool G: Ukraine, Greece, Albania, Cyprus
Pool H: Russia, Israel, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey
All tournaments are double-gender events with every country lining up one female and one male duo each, with the first-ranked and runner-up of each Pool making it to the final where the six passes to make it to Nanjing will be at stake.
“After the extremely positive outcome of the Beach Volleyball Continental Cup in the lead up to the London Olympics, we are extremely pleased to add this competition to our portfolio, thereby providing young players with a unique opportunity to represent their country on the international stage, most probably for the first time in their career, and to test out their skills as they share the ultimate dream of every sportsperson, i.e. to become – one day – an Olympian” CEV President André Meyer says.
A detailed calendar of the Zonal Phase – with all venues – will be released in the coming weeks.
source : CEV