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Beach Volleyball’s past now its future
- Updated: August 4, 2016
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 3, 2016 – When one arrives at the newly-constructed Beach Volleyball arena for the Rio 2016 Olympics on iconic Copacabana where the legends of the sport have been competing and practicing for the past 30 years, your immediate reaction is “wow” and how “special” the competition will be for the Summer Games.
Dubbed the “Coliseu on Copacabana”, the construction for the Beach Volleyball compound featuring the 12,000-seat center court started in mid-May. With 108 matches to be played over a 13-day period starting Saturday and concluding August 18, Beach Volleyball and Olympic fans have been quick to buy tickets for the sixth consecutive quadrennial in which the sport has been contested in the Summer Games.
The Rio 2016 Olympic competition marks the third-time in the last 11 months that the top players on the FIVB World Tour have returned to Copacabana as the current Olympic site hosted a “test” event (Rio Open) last September followed by the US$800,000 Rio Grand Slam in mid-March where more than 140,000 fans attended six days of competition.
BRAZILIANS BEST
Since the first FIVB-sanctioned tournament in 1987, Rio de Janeiro has organized 17 men’s and 10 women’s tournaments. The current Copacabana site also hosted the 2003 FIVB World Championships where Brazilians Emanuel Rego/Ricardo Santos and Americans Misty May-Treanor/Kerri Walsh Jennings topped the men’s and women’s podiums, respectively.
With Rio de Janeiro hosting its 18th FIVB-sanctioned Beach Volleyball event, the South American city ties Klagenfurt in staging the most international events. Brazilian pairs have won 25 of the 51 men’s medals given out to date in Rio. The women from Brazil have won 17 of the 30 Rio women’s medals. Included in the medal total are the podium placers from the 2005 FIVB under-21 World Championships on Copacabana.
“This is the place and the event that everyone has been preparing for the past four seasons,” said 31-year old Latvian Aleksandrs Samoilovs, who has …
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