With the inaugural event of the new Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour less than four weeks away, the entry lists for the Tlaxcala Challenge in Mexico have been released to further unveil the beach volleyball field at the start of the new Olympic cycle in terms of old or new partnerships and where they stand with their entry points.

The historic tournament from March 16 through 20 in Tlaxcala, a city situated east of the Mexican capital, is set to spark excitement among beach volleyball players and fans alike, as it gets the world’s all-new premier beach volleyball tour underway and offers all the action live or on demand on Volleyball TV.

Men’s teams from four continental confederations signed up to battle it out for a share of the USD 75,000 prize purse available to each gender. 16 of them are seeded directly into the 24-team main draw to be played in a format with modified pool play followed by single eliminations. Another eight will emerge from the 32-team knockout qualifiers. The 48 teams that made the cut are representatives of 22 different countries.

As expected, long-term pairings that stayed intact after the end of the previous Olympic cycle make up a large chunk of the 16 teams with a direct ticket to the main draw, but as many as five newly formed duos also combined enough entry points to make that short list.

All of the top three Dutch pairs will continue as they were. They have occupied three of the first four spots in the preliminary seeding. Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot, who won gold at the Gstaad 4-star just before the Olympics and silver at the European Championship just after Tokyo, lead the way, followed by seasoned Olympians Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen, whose 2021 track record includes an Ostrava 4-star gold. Christiaan Varenhorst and Steven van de Velde, the bronze medallists of the 2021 World Tour Finals, are seeded fourth.

In between, in position three, are Olympic silver medallists and reigning world champions Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy of Russia. There is another Russian duo further down the list, in position seven, and that’s the team of Ilya Leshukov and his new partner Anton Kislytsyn.

Poland’s Michal Bryl and Bartosz Losiak are the highest ranked new tandem. The two Olympians are seeded fifth. Iconic Latvians Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins, who surprisingly fell just short of making it to Tokyo 2020, will be back in action as the number six team on the list for Tlaxcala.

2016 Olympic champion Alison Cerutti and his new teammate Gustavo Carvalhaes, in number eight, are the only Brazilian duo among the top 16. Marco Krattiger and Florian Breer, who are now Switzerland’s number one pair after Mirco Gerson retired, are seeded ninth.

A few more well-known teams like Robin Seidl and Philipp Waller and Christoph Dressler and Alexander Huber of Austria, Pablo Herrera and Adrian Gavira of Spain, Chaim Schalk and Theodore Brunner of USA and Josue Gaxiola and Jose Rubio of Mexico will also be among the Tlaxcala main draw participants. So will the new Italian joint venture of Daniele Lupo and Alex Ranghieri, as well as another new duo, Miguel Sarabia and Juan Virgen, representing the host country.

Canada’s Ben Saxton and Grant O'Gorman lead the line-up of 32 teams set to compete in the Tlaxcala Challenge qualifications. That list also contains a number of other familiar pairs, including Austria’s Moritz Pristauz and Martin Ermacora, Sweden’s David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig and Chilean cousins Marco Grimalt and Esteban Grimalt, to name a few, as well as a number of high-calibre stars like Italy’s Paolo Nicolai, Brazil’s Bruno Schmidt, USA’s Nick Lucena and Tayor Crabb, or Austria’s Alexander Horst, who will begin the Beach Pro Tour with new partners.

Quick links:
Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour
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