The World Championships are the biggest tournament of the year and today we know the 96 teams that will be playing. The tournament is in Rome from June 10th to 19th and last weeks tournament in Kusadasi was the last chance for teams to make their case for an invitation.
The top 25 ranked teams of each gender, plus four teams from each confederation (20 total) and three wild cards make up the field. One feature of the Pro Beach Tour is the removal of the country quota, but at the World Championships, county quotas are in full effect. A maximum of four teams can play from each country, not including wild cards. As hosts, Italy get a minimum of two places for each gender and up to six teams in total. They will have five men’s teams and four women’s teams playing in Rome.
The entry lists
The links below have the 48 teams of each gender that have a chance to be world champions.
Women’s field confusion
The men’s list reads the way you would expect based on current entry rankings, but the women’s list takes a little more work to understand. This is my interpretation, so please comment below if you have any other insights.
The top 23 teams on the list are in order, but since there are no Italian women’s teams in the top 25, the final two places went to Claudia Scampoli & Margherita Bianchin and Marta Menegatti & Valentina Gottardi. That meant that Miki Ishii & Sayaka Mizoe of Japan, who were in the top 25, were not given places based on being in the top 25, but rather as the first team from Asia. The same is true for the Esmée Böbner & Zoé Vergé-Dépré. They were awarded the first European spot even though they are 25th in terms of points. It is lucky for the Swiss and Japanese women that their confederations are sending four teams based on ranking points. NORCECA (North America, Central America and the Caribbean) awarded their places via a qualification tournament.
Domino effect
Ishii and Mizoe were a mere 8 points behind Ana Gallay & Fernanda Pereyra of Argentina. Had they picked up a few extra points along the way (or entered another tournament) they would have been in the top 25, opening a place for an additional Asian team. Instead, it was Diana Rios & Margarita Guzman of Columbia that really benefitted by claiming the final South America place.
Who got the wild cards?
On the women’s side, the wild cards stayed in Europe. French pair Lézana Placette & Alexia Richard and Italian teams, Reka & Viktoria Orsi Toth and Valentina Cali & Margherita Tega get a chance to play. For the men, it is Mexico’s Juan Virgen & Miguel Sarabia along with two Italian teams, Davide Benzi & Carlo Bonifazi and Jakob Windisch & Gianluca Dal Corso getting the call. No one should begrudge Mexico getting a World Championship wild card after hosting so many tournaments over the last two years.
Hamburg repeat?
The last world championship tournament was held in 2019 and Hamburg put on quite a spectacular show. I’m hoping for more of the same in Rome. As far as repeats on the podium go, that is possible for five of the six women’s medalists, but only three of the men’s.
Women’s gold medalists, Sarah Pavan & Melissa Humana-Paredes are back as the 10th seed. Silver medalist April Ross has a new partner, Emily Day, and are the 11th seed, while bronze medalists from the last World Championships Mariafe Artacho & Taliqua Clancy enter as the 8th seeds.
On the men’s side, Anders Mol & Christian Sorum won bronze last time enter as the seventh seeds, although they are favorites to win. Clemens Wickler won silver in an unforgettable home performance but after the surprising retirement of Julius Thole, he is playing with another giant blocker in Nils Ehlers. The Germans enter as the 16th seed. Gold medalists from Hamburg, Krasilnikov & Stoyanovskiy aren’t welcome at the World Championships due to Russia’s invasion of and continued aggression against Ukraine.
The Beach Volley Blog’s early favorites list
On the women’s side it is impossible to look past the top seeds, Katja Stam & Raïsa Schoon. They have medaled three times this year including gold at the first Elite 16 tournament in Rosario, Mexico. Brazil’s Ana Patricia and Duda are back together after winning three youth world championships. They have only played one Beach Pro Tour event in Rosarito, where they finished 5th, but I’m picking them for silver in Rome. I’m staying in Brazil for my third pick with Barbara and Carol. They have won gold twice this year. Picking my three medalists from the top four seeds is pretty boring, but I’ll get more creative with the men.
For my men’s picks, I’m going with Paolo Nicolai & Samuele Cottafava for gold. Don’t go to Vegas with my picks, but I love the way this team plays. I’ve been incredibly impressed with Cottafava this year and everyone knows what Paolo brings to the sand. Wouldn’t you love to see the home fans get rocking behind this team. The silver will go to Qatar’s Ahmed & Cherif. They had a disappointing showing in Doha, but their Rosarito triumph was full of highlight reel plays that are deserving of a world championship final. My bronze medal pick is Mol and Sorum who will drop a three-set marathon to Nicolai and Cottafava in an epic semifinal.
Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss miss out
Other than Stam and Schoon, the hottest team in women’s beach volleyball has to be Americans Taryn Kloth & Kristen Nuss. They won gold in Kusadasi last Sunday with a thrilling three set victory over Australian Olympic silver medalists Mariafe Artacho & Taliqua Clancy (21-12, 17-21, 17-15 ). The young Americans also won their first ever international tournament in Coolangatta, Australia to launch their rise up the rankings. They came out of the qualifiers to win both of those gold medals. They have a remarkable 18 – 3 match record on the Beach Pro Tour in addition to winning the first AVP tournament of the year in Austin, Texas. So why aren’t they one of my favorites? Because they aren’t going to be in Rome.
They are just 20 points behind Terese Cannon & Sarah Sponcil in the entry rankings, making them the fifth American team. Kloth and Nuss beat Cannon and Sponcil in the semifinals in Turkey last Sunday to earn their place in the gold medal match, but it wasn’t quite enough for them to make the World Championships. I had hoped that based on their fine form this year, they’d be granted a wild card, but the wild cards went elsewhere. Their absence is probably a huge relief to all the other teams in the women’s field, but a big loss for fans that want to see the best play. Country quota’s and wild cards are always a recipe for controversy and the Rome World Championships are no exception.
Sponcil and Cannon had started their partnership with a series of duds, but they were fantastic in Kusadasi. Their bronze medal in Turkey shows they are back on track and the points they earned were just enough to keep them in the World Championship field.
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Crabbs swap places
Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb were semifinalists at the World Championships in 2019, but their early exit from the Kusadasi tournament sent them tumbling out of the top 25 at just the wrong time. They would have been better off not playing. To make matters worse, NORCECA doesn’t send teams based on entry rankings but rather based on a World Championship Qualifying tournament that Bourne and Crabb didn’t play in. It was Trevor’s brother Taylor and his partner Taylor Sander that played and won that tournament and will be going to Rome instead. The NORCECA qualification tournament wasn’t without controversy of its own, with Taylor unloading his frustration in an Instagram post that he later deleted.
The two Taylors will join Chaim Schalk and Theo Brunner at the World Championships. The fact that the once mighty American men’s beach volleyball program only qualified two teams to the World Championships should be of huge concern to American fans.
Evandro and Alvaro stung by quota
Another team that may have wished for a wild card is 2017 World Champion Evandro and his partner Alvaro. They were passed in the rankings by Evandro’s partner for the last several years, Bruno based on his bronze medal at the South American Championships a week ago. Bruno and Saymon Barbosa, who had been poor at best this year are now the fourth Brazilian men’s team, leaving Evandro and Alvaro in 5th and out of the World Championships. Evandro and Alvaro have been frustrating to watch this season. On multiple occasions I’ve seen them easily win a first set only to later read that they lost in three to a seemingly inferior team. Their underperformances have definitely caught up with them.
More than just the world championships
Of course the title of World Champion is the real prize, but the points available will impact the rest of the summer. The winning team collects a whopping 1600 points and the eight teams that tie for 9th will earn what the winner of a challenge tournament gains. That means 16 teams will earn points equal or better to the winners of a challenge tournament. With limited places available in the big money Elite 16 tournaments, missing out on the World Championships could be devastating for months to come. You can expect Evandro & Alvaro and Tri and Trevor to struggle to even make the qualifiers of Elite 16s for the rest of the summer. Both teams only have themselves to blame as they couldn’t get the early season results they needed.
The Draw
The teams will be drawn into pools on May 31st at 7 pm (Rome time zone). You can watch it live on the Beach Volleyball World YouTube channel.