LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND- After hosting three international Beach Volleyball events last year, including the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, China will stage the first of two SWATCH FIVB World Tour stops on the 2009 calendar starting with this week’s US$380,000 China Shanghai Jinshan Open. The China Shanghai Jinshan Open Country quota playoff matches will be held Tuesday (April 28) for women. The Qualification Tournaments to determine the last eight spots for the “money” rounds for each gender will be played Wednesday for women. The women’s Main Draw rounds will start Thursday for women as the teams head into the weekend seeking the $30,000 first-place prizes. The medal matches will be Saturday for women. as the gold medal teams from the 2008 China Shanghai Jinshan Open return, but will be playing with different partners. Harley Marques and Pedro Salgado won the 2008 China Shanghai Jinshan Open for the second-straight year, but the Brazilians will be competing with Alison Cerutti and Pedro Cunha, respectively. In the second-opening SWATCH FIVB World Tour event last week in Brazil, Alison and Harley placed second while Cunha and Salgado finish ninth.
Talita is playing with Maria Antonelli this season with Renata being paired with Vanilda Leao as the two teams placed 13th and fifth, respectively, in the Brasília opener. Juliana and Larissa, who have netted gold (2005), bronze (2006) and silver (2008) in three previous Shanghai appearances, won last week’s women’s gold medal in Brasília. China will be staging a SWATCH FIVB World Tour event for the 12-straight season with the China Shanghai Jinshan Open being the sixth-straight year that the Asia country has hosted a men’s event. The Beach Volley Venue in the Jinshan District of Shanghai has been the site of the international tour stop since 2004 with the 2009 event being the fifth-straight season of double gender competition. A total of 58 men’s and 34 women’s teams from 28 countries from all five FIVB confederations have entered the China Shanghai Jinshan Open (as of April 24, 2009), including Angola, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Estonia, France, Georgia, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and Venezuela. While Chinese women’s teams have won two gold medals in Shanghai, the best finish by the host country men’s team was a silver medal placement at the 2008 Shanghai stop Penggen Wu and Linyin Xu. Playing with Zhang, the 2006 women’s gold medal for Xue made her the youngest player to win a SWATCH gold medal (17 years, 3 months, 10 days).
The SWATCH FIVB World Tour will feature single gender men’s events in Italy (Rome, May 12-17) and Poland (Myslowice, May 26-31) before the world championships. The women’s side of the SWATCH FIVB World Tour will continue in Asia with single gender stops in Japan (Osaka, May 19-24) and Korea (, Seoul, May 26-31). | |
