The seventh Challenge event on the 2023 Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour is coming to Goa this week, from October 19 through 22, and it will be the first major world-level tournament held in India.
Challenge - Goa, IND - 2023
Primo evento Beach Pro Tour in India prenderà il via giovedì
Pubblicato 04:16, 18 ott 2023
Spain’s Paula Soria, one of the stars in Thursday’s qualifiers in Goa
· Watch the Beach Pro Tour Goa Challenge qualifiers live on the Beach Volleyball World channel.
· Watch the Beach Pro Tour Goa Challenge main draw live on VBTV.
Overall, it will be the fourth time India is hosting a world-level beach volleyball event. Back in 2008 and 2010, Chennai welcomed a couple of FIVB Challengers, and in 2019, the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour had a 1-star stop in Visakhapatnam, but a tournament with so many top-calibre stars as the one starting in Goa is taking place in the southern Asian country for the first time in history. The battles in Goa will unfold at the Zuri White Sands Resorts in the sands of Varca Beach in India’s smallest state.
The 2023 Goa Challenge will get underway on Thursday morning at 08:30 local time (03:00 UTC). The first competition day will offer the qualification battles in two knockout rounds with eight available main draw vacancies per gender at stake.
With 22 teams joining the women’s qualifiers, 10 have already been granted a spot in the second round and are just one win away from the main draw. Bracket leaders Liliana Fernаndez & Paula Soria (pictured in the main photo) of Spain are one of them and are already awaiting their opponents, who will emerge from the tournament opener between Czechia’s Kristyna Adamcikova & Karin Zolnercikova and Latvia’s Liva Ebere & Deniela Konstantinova.
Two of the second-round deciders have already been lined up with both opponents and they will start at 09:20 local time (03:50 UTC). In one of them, Austria’s Franziska Friedl & Katharina Schutzenhofer will take on USA’s Kimberly Hildreth & Teegan Van Gunst, and in the other, Spain’s Belen Carro & Angela Lobato will lock horns with Lithuania’s Ieva Vasiliauskaite & Erika Kliokmanaite.
Five of the 27 teams in the men’s qualifiers have earned their byes to start directly from the second round and they are Germany’s Lukas Pfretzschner & Sven Winter, China’s Wang Yanwei & Li Jie, Austria’s Robin Seidl & Moritz Pristauz, Australia’s Izac Carracher & Mark Nicolaidis and Switzerland’s Adrian Heidrich & Leo Dillier.
The remaining 11 participants in the second round will arrive from the first round, starring 38-year-old London 2012 Olympic bronze medallist and three-time Olympian Martins Plavins of Latvia along with his new 18-year-old partner Kristians Fokerots in their first Challenge-level appearance as a team. They will face the Japanese pairing of 39-year-old Tokyo 2020 Olympian Yusuke Ishijima (Gottsu) and 32-year-old Takumi Takahashi.
L'Intervista
"Abbiamo avuto un'accoglienza davvero piacevole. Tutte le persone sono davvero molto gentili", ha dichiarato a Prime Media Goa l'atleta tedesca Leonie Kortzinger, che inizierà la sua campagna a Goa insieme alla compagna di squadra Lea Sophie Kunst direttamente nel main draw di venerdì. "È la nostra prima volta in India, quindi ci stiamo godendo la cultura e adoriamo il cibo. Il clima è più caldo che in Germania. Ci piace molto questo stadio e credo che sarà un torneo molto bello. Siamo entusiasti di essere nel main draw e vogliamo vedere dove ci porterà".
Un totale di 81 squadre provenienti da 25 paesi diversi e da tutte e cinque le confederazioni continentali si daranno battaglia per aggiudicarsi la loro parte del montepremi di 150.000 dollari e per ottenere preziosi punti di qualificazione olimpica. Le qualificazioni a eliminazione diretta determineranno le otto squadre per sesso che completeranno il tabellone principale a 24 squadre. Le squadre del main draw saranno divise in sei gironi: le vincitrici dei gironi, le seconde classificate e le due migliori terze classificate passeranno direttamente agli ottavi di finale. Le rimanenti quattro squadre terze classificate passeranno a un turno di playoff per occupare i due posti rimasti vacanti nelle ultime 16.
