Beach Volleyball Worlds Near Finale in The Netherlands

(ATR)World titles are on the line for the top men’s and women’s beach volleyball teams this weekend in the Hague, Netherlands.

The ten-day tournament, comprised of 96 male and female teams playing 208 matches, has been spread across four Dutch cities: Amsterdam, Apeldoorn, Rotterdam and The Hague.

Veteran FIVB events director Angelo Squeo says that the "pros outweighed the cons, which were very little" with the newly introduced four-city, four-venue concept. The Netherlands is hosting the FIVB showcase beach event for the first time.

"We wanted to create a country event and not a city event, and we wanted to create a strong brand with color to identify the country – this year with orange to identify the Netherlands," Squeo tells Around the Rings in a phone interview from The Hague.

"Our concept was to have four events in parallel, four groups of officials, four pools of teams and a Dutch team in every group for promotion," Squeo said.

Squeo, who has worked with the FIVB at every Olympic beach volleyball tournament since the sport’s debut at the Atlanta 1996 Olympics, admitted that the concept triggered some minor difficulties.

"What was challenging was to try to uniform the interpretation of rules and regulations during the events," Squeo said. "Also with training practice times and trying to stay with the schedule because some matches were going longer."

The main venue in The Hague seats 5,000 spectators, while each of the three others provided a capacity of 2,000.

Squeo says that TV coverage has vastly improved with the new concept."At the Olympics, we have all matches covered by OBS (Olympic Broadcasting Services), but at past world championships with six courts OBS only covered center court," he said. "The big difference here with the four cities, we have multiple high definition with the host broadcaster covering almost all matches."

With eight matches remaining in the tournament, Squeo says that "the new concept worked well" and is a model that could be seen at future world championships.

"We were right to introduce this new idea," Squeo said. "We feel there is now more energy in the country for beach volleyball. Venues were full in four cities, especially when the Dutch teams were playing.We have sort of a fever here – people in The Netherlands are becoming beach volleyball addicted."

Brazil the Team to Beat

One year ahead of the Rio Olympics, Brazil continues to assert its dominance on the sand of beach volleyball. Three Brazilian women’s and two men’s teams have advanced to this weekend’ssemi-finals. Women’s finals are Saturday evening, while the men wrap up the tournament on Sunday night.

Defending Dutch world champions, Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwse, were unceremoniously eliminated in the round of 32 by Brazilians Filho and Felipe.

Likely captivating the most attention will be Saturday afternoon men’s semi-final between the popular Dutch duo of Reinder Nummerdor and Christian Varenhorst versus Nick Lucena and Theo Brunner of the U.S.

All remaining matches at the 5,000-seat venue are sold out.Winning teams secure additional places for their respective countries at the 2016 Olympics.

Midnight Madness for Rio 2016

Rio 2016 will contest beach volleyball matches beginning at midnight, including the men’s and women’s gold medal finals."We will try to do a new sport presentation concept with midnight matches for the first time," Squeo said.

Squeo suggests the atmosphere at the 12,000-capacity Copacabana stadium will be electric, fueling parties on the beach that will linger into the small hours.

The Italian volleyball executivesays that the golden sands of Copacabana played a major role in the sport achieving Olympic status 19 years ago."We will go back to the beach where we had the most important event in 1993 when IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch and other IOC members came to Copacabana to enjoy a match," Squeo said, referring to an event which helped pave the way for the sport’s inclusion in the Olympics.

Moscow, Boston Eye 2017 Worlds

Boston and a joint bid from Moscow and Sochi are in the running to host the 2017 edition of the beach volleyball world championships."These cities were very curious to see this event and are very enthusiastic after seeing this experience," Squeo said.

"I spoke to the people of Boston and they are convinced that they want to invest with this event," he said.

The beach volleyball events director said that the FIVB expects to make a decision on the 2017 host city over the next few months.Additional candidates have until the end of July to join the race.

New World Record

The world record for the ‘largest beach volleyball tournament’ was set on the beaches of Scheveningen in The Hague on June 27. At 15:15 CET it was confirmed that 2,355 beach volleyballers played simultaneously to break the previous Guinness World Record of 1,610.

"It was one kilometer on the beach, nearly 300 courts playing at the same time," Squeo noted. "For somebody who loves the sport, it was something emotional."

FIVB president Ary Graca was present, marking the moment by holding up a sign with the number 2,355.The previous world record had been established in Canada last year.

Reported by Brian Pinelli

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