Louise Bawden (facing the camera) and Becchara Palmer of Australia post two wins Tuesday to advance to the Main Draw at the A1 Beach Volleyball Grand Slam presented by Volksbank in Klagenfurt, Austria. |
Klagenfurt, Austria, July 27, 2010 - The women’s qualifier here Tuesday at the US$600,000 A1 Beach Volleyball Grand Slam presented by Volksbank featured a 32-team, 24-match schedule with pairs from eight countries advancing to Wednesday’s opening Main Draw rounds in the SWATCH FIVB World Tour stop.
The eighth of 12 double gender events on the SWATCH FIVB World Tour also staged two men’s Country Quota matches Tuesday for teams from Brazil and Germany to help set the field for Wednesday’s Qualification Tournament to determine the last eight spots for Thursday’s opening rounds of pool play.
The women’s “final four” matches will be played Saturday at the center court the Metnitzstrand at Lake Wörthersee followed by the men’s medal rounds Sunday as the winning teams in each gender will share the $43,500 first-place prizes. The A1 Beach Volleyball Grand Slam is being played in the capital of Carinthia for the 14th-time.
Leading the list of qualifiers Tuesday were top-seeded Louise Bawden and Becchara Palmer as the Australians defeated teams from Slovenia and China to advance to Wednesday’s opening pool play rounds were 32 tandems will compete in eight groups with the top three pairs from each section advancing to the 24-team single-elimination bracket where the first set of matches will be played Thursday.
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fter playing in their first eight SWATCH FIVB World Tour events as automatic Main Draw qualifiers, Bawden and Palmer’s lack of a “quality” finish (ninth or higher) in their first six participations dropped the Australians into the single-elimination qualifiers. In their first six events in 2010, Bawden and Palmer posted a 13th, three 17ths and two 25ths.
Bawden and Palmer did post a “quality” finish in their last SWATCH stop last week in France with a ninth-place in Marseille where they defeated Australian Olympians Tamsin Barnett Hinchley and Natalie Cook, who earned a “wild card” this week. With Hinchley and Cook sitting out last season, Bawden and Palmer were the last Australian men’s and women’s team to medal on the SWATCH FIVB World Tour with a 2009 silver medal in Poland.
Other top-seeded pairs advancing to Wednesday’s Main Draw were second-seeded Maria Bratkova/Evgenia Ukolova of Russia, third-seeded Elsa Baquerizo/Liliana Fernandez Steiner of Spain and seventh-seeded Vivian Cunha/Taiana Lima of Brazil, who also had to win two Country Quota matches Monday to advance to the A1 Beach Volleyball Grand Slam qualifier.
Heading the list of teams posting seed-break-throughs to earn “money” round berths were ninth-seeded Inese Jursone and Inguna Minusa of Latvia with a pair of qualifying wins Tuesday over pairs from Denmark and Germany. Jursone and Minusa, the reigning European champions after winning the title last September in Sochi, Russia, led their county to a second-place finish in last week’s European Continental Cup in Yantarniy, Russia.
Other seed-break-through teams were 12th-seeded Erika Fabjan/Simona Fabjan of Slovenia, 20th-seeded Sona Novakova/Tereza Tobiasova of the Czech Republic, and 27th-seeded Kerstin Pichler/Cornelia Rimser of Austria. The host country will now have three teams in the Main Draw, including the Schwaiger sisters (Doris and Stefanie) and Barbara Hansel/Sara Montagnolli.
Montagnolli, who teamed with Hansel to claim their first SWATCH FIVB World Tour medals last week with a third-place this past weekend in Marseille, France, will join Minusa Wednesday as the only players to play in all 10 A1 Beach Volleyball Grand Slam women’s events with the first stop for the gender in Klagenfurt being at the 2001 world championships. The Schwaigers captured the silver medal in Marseille.
After the Austrian stop, the season’s final SWATCH FIVB World Tour Grand Slam event will be in Poland (Stare Jablonki, August 2-8). Open events will conclude the European portion of the international season with stops in Norway (Kristiansand, August 9-15), Finland (Aland, August 16-22) and The Netherlands (The Hague, August 23-29).
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