Swiss women seeking an Olympic first

Lausanne, Switzerland, April 25, 2016 – For many years, starting in the mid-1990s, followers of the international Beach Volleyball scene would marvel about the competitiveness of the men’s teams from landlocked Switzerland with the likes of Patrick Heuscher and Stefan Kobel winning a bronze medal at the Athens 2004 Olympic Games and the successes of the Laciga brothers.

But now, it is the Swiss women teams of Isabelle Forrer/Anouk Vergé-Dépré and Joana Heidrich/Nadine Zumkehr that are capturing the Beach Volleyball headlines for the European country around the world as both pairs are coming off a successful trip to China the past two weeks with “elite eight” finishes at events in Xiamen and Fuzhou.

MEDALS MATTER

With the successes highlighted by gold (Forrer/Vergé-Dépré in Xiamen) and bronze (Heidrich/Zumkehr in Fuzhou) medal finishes, the two Swiss women’s team are in position to secure two spots in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games via the FIVB World Tour as two of the top 15 pairs on the provisional ranking list.

Forrer and Vergé-Dépré are currently No. 8 on the list with 4,640 points for their best 12 finishes on the FIVB World Tour since the start of the Rio qualifying process in April 2015.  One of the top placements for Forrer and Vergé-Dépré was a quarter-final finish last August at the European Championships in Klagenfurt, Austria.

With a fifth in Xiamen and a third in Fuzhou, Heidrich and Zumkehr are No. 13 on the provisional list with 4,120 points.  Heidrich and Zumkehr, who also won a gold medal in Xiamen at a FIVB World Tour stop there last September, are 30 and 150 points ahead of No. 14 Fan Wang/Yuan Yue of China (4,090 points) and No. 15 Ana Galley/Georgina Klug of Argentina (3,930), respectively.

THIRD TIME

By finishing third and fourth in Fuzhou, it marked the third-time since the start of the women’s competition on the FIVB World Tour in 1992 that two Swiss teams have advanced to the medal rounds in an international event.  Xiamen has been good spot for the Swiss women as Forrer and Vergé-Dépré joined Heidrich and Zumkehr on the podium last September by earning the bronze medal.  Two weeks prior to that, the Swiss had their first World Tour double semifinalists when Forrer/Vergé-Dépré won the silver and Heidrich/Zumkehr the bronze in Sochi, Russia.

If both Swiss pairs qualify for the quadrennial event on Copacabana this August, it will mark the first time the “landlocked” European country will have two women’s teams in same Olympic Games.  The Swiss men accomplished the feat of having two teams in the Athens 2004, Beijing 2008 and London 2012 Olympic Games.

SWISS WOMEN OLYMPIANS

With Simone Kuhn the constant figure, the Swiss women were represented by one team in the Athens (Nicole Schnyder), Beijing (Lea Schwer) and London (Zumkehr) Summer Games.  Kuhn and Zumkehr, who teamed to win the Swiss women’s first-ever gold medal on the FIVB World Tour at a 2009 stop in Sanya, China, placed ninth in London after being eliminated by eventual silver medal winners Jen Kessy and April Ross of the United States.

As fate would have it, it was Kessy and Ross who were the …

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