Only four days after playing for medals at last week’s Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Itapema Challenge, Cubans Jorge Alayo and Noslen Díaz will be back on the court in Brazil on Thursday, but this time playing for access to the main draw at the Saquarema Challenge.

The up-and-coming Cubans are one of the 64 teams (32 in each gender) that will be on the court at the Campo de Aviação on the opening day of the second of three Beach Pro Tour events set to happen in Brazil this month, when the last eight spots in the main draw for the men and the women will be up for grabs.

• Watch the Beach Pro Tour Saquarema Challenge live or on demand on VBTV

The competition is scheduled to begin in Saquarema at 08:00 local time (11:00 UTC) and as many as 48 matches will take place during the day – the teams that qualify for the main draw will need to win a pair of encounters each.

Playing in just their third Beach Pro Tour event, the 21-year-old Alayo and the 20-year-old Díaz are no strangers to qualifiers, having succeeded in both of their previous tournaments this season, advancing at the La Paz Challenge and the Itapema Challenge.

The Cubans, who made it to the podium in each of the four NORCECA continental events they played in 2022, had a particularly remarkable run last week in Itapema, winning six of their first seven matches to go from the qualifier to the semifinals, finishing fourth – they were ninth in La Paz, in March.

In Saquarema, the Caribbean, who represented their country at last year’s FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship and finished 17^th, will again have to win a pair of qualifier matches to make it to the main draw.

Alayo and Díaz will face strong competition for the eight main draw spots in Saquarema, with teams from 22 different countries fighting for qualification. Among them, there are five duos that, just like the Cubans, advanced last week in Itapema – Argentina’s Nicolás Capogrosso/Tomas Capogrosso, Portugal’s João Pedrosa/Hugo Campos, Switzerland’s Quentin Métral/Yves Haussener and USA’s Taylor Sander/Taylor Crabb and Andy Benesh/Miles Partain.

Other standouts in the men’s qualifier in Itapema will be Latvian veterans Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins, Brazilian Olympic champion Alison Cerutti, who will play with Oscar Guimarães, and Canadian Olympian Sam Schachter, who will have Dan Dearing by his side.

Beach Pro Tour Saquarema Challenge - Match Schedule

Reuniting duos from 19 countries, the women’s qualifier in Saquarema will feature only three teams that advanced in Itapema and will try to repeat their success at the Campo de Aviação – the Netherlands’ Emma Piersma/Mexime van Driel and Brecht Piersma/Emi van Driel and Austria’s Ronja Klinger/Dorina Klinger.

Other popular names that will make an attempt to play in the main draw in Brazil this week are German Olympic champion Laura Ludwig, with her new partner and former volleyball star Louisa Lippmann, Austria’s top team of Katharina Schützenhöfer and Lena Plesiutschnig and Japanese Olympian Megumi Murakami, who will be paired with Sakurako Fujii.

The Saquarema Challenge will be played over four days in the coastal city located in the state of Rio de Janeiro. The qualifier will be played on Thursday, with the main draw beginning on Friday with the pool phase. The Round of the 16 and the quarterfinals will be held on Saturday with the semifinals and medal matches ending the tournament on Sunday.

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