DOHA: The curtain falls on the exciting first season of the Beach Pro Tour, with 20 of the world’s top beach volleyball teams battling it out for the 2022 season championship in Doha from January 26-29. The tour will take place at the Aspire Park Sports Complex.

The event is organized under the supervision of the International Volleyball Federation and in cooperation with the Qatar Volleyball Association (QVA) and the Aspire Zone, which will host the tournament for three years, starting in January 2023.

Aspire Zone is organizing this tour as part of their great cooperation with QVA in organizing various international tournaments. Once the 2022 season champions are crowned, attention will turn to the start of the 2023 Beach Pro Tour campaign, which kicks off just days after the final in Doha with a tantalizing Elite16 event featuring the world’s best partnerships.

All ten teams of each gender enter the end-of-season show after a memorable first season of the Beach Pro Tour, which kicked off in March 2022 and wowed crowds at 47 events around the world before concluding in December.

Eight of the teams have secured their place at the Aspire Park sports complex thanks to their impressive performances on the Beach Pro Tour in 2022, according to world ranking points as of December 5, with the stadium complete with two wildcards.

Finalists will be crowned Beach Pro Tour 2022 champions and will receive equal prize money of $150,000 out of a total prize pool of $800,000.

In the men’s competition, the top two seeds are local favorites Ahmed Tejan and Sherif Younis, and in what promises to be tantalizing entertainment for beach volleyball fans, the Qatari team face fierce competition from the share of players like the Norwegian Olympic and world champion Anders Moll. Christian Sorum – Another handful of Beach Pro Tour winning teams in 2022.

Chilean cousins ​​Marco and Esteban Grimalt, winners of the Gstaad Elite 16 title in July, and Italian rookie duo Adrian Carambola and Alex Rangieri get wildcard entries.

Competitive men’s teams: Sharif / Ahmed (Qatar), prof. mol/k. Sorum (Norway), Brouwer/Meeuwsen (Netherlands), George/Andre (Brazil), Bryl/Losiak (Poland), Nicolai/Cottafava (Italy), Perusic/Schweiner (Czech Republic), E. Grimalt/M. Grimalt (Chile), Renato / Vitor Felipe (Brazil), Carambula / Ranghieri (Italy).

The women’s event is led by Brazilian world champions Eduarda Duda Santos Lisboa and Ana Patricia Silva Ramos, who won five Elite16 medals in 2022, including gold in Gstaad and Uberlândia.

The duo will face competition from compatriots Barbara Seixas and Carolina Solberg, who are arguably two of the most consistent teams on the Tour in 2022, as well as another team who have won two Elite16 titles during the season, Katja Stam and Raisa Schoon from the Netherlands. . .

The two women’s scholarships were awarded to newly created peers. 2019 world champion Sarah Pavan and 2021 world runner-up Sophie Bokovic will make their Beach Pro Tour debuts in Doha, while the second wild card is Kelly Cheng and Sarah Hughes from the United States, who met in the end of the season and won. Consecutive events at Torquay.

Female teams in competition: Duda/Ana Patricia (Brazil), Barbara/Carol (Brazil), Stam/Sean (Netherlands), Clancy/Mariavi (Australia), Anastasia/Tina (Latvia), Huberle/Brunner (Switzerland), Tillmann/Muller (Germany), Nuss/Cloth (USA), Hughes/Cheng (USA), Pavan/Bukovik (Canada).