Long Beach, USA, July 19, 2017 - After placing 17th in their first FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships appearance together in the Netherlands in 2015, Germans Chantal Laboureur and Julia Sude are seeking a better finish in the 2017 edition of the event.
“It will be our second World Championship together and we want to do better,” said the 29-year old Sude, who will be competing in her fourth FIVB World Championships after placing 37th with Claudia Lehmann in 2009 in Norway (Stavanger) and fifth with Jana Kohler in 2011 (Rome).
“We will be better than in the last World Championships and we’ll be better prepared,” Sude added. “We have grown as a team together and collected a lot of experience. We are trying to build with small steps by using our strategies faster and being more consistent.”
The 27-year Laboureur, who won a FIVB Under-19 World Championship in 2008 with Levke Spinger, said: “Because Vienna is close to Germany, we’ll have a lot of family members there. It’s a big event and we are really look forward to it.”
In the 2015 World Championships, Laboureur and Sude almost matched their seed (No. 18) with their 17th-place finish. The Germans won all three of their pool play matches in the Netherlands, including a three-set win over eventual bronze medal finishers Maria Antonelli and Juliana Felisberta of Brazil. Laboureur and Sude lost in the first round of elimination, however, to 25th-seeded Tatyana Mashkova/Irina Tsimbalova of Kazakhstan.
Laboureur and Sude will be seeded second in the 2017 Vienna World Championships and will open Pool B play on July 29 against 47th-seeded Andrea Galindo/Claudia "Gorda" Galindo of Colombia. The Germans will also meet 26th-seeded Lidiannis Echeverria/Leila Martinez of Cuba on July 30 and 23rd-seeded Elsa Baquerizo/Angela Lobato of Spain on August 1 in their group.
With one event left on their FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour schedul prior to the World Championships (in Olsztyn, Poland), Laboureur and Sude will enter the Vienna competition as one of the more experienced women’s teams in the competition. The Germans have participated in 46 FIVB World Tour events with two gold medals, seven podium placements, nine final four finishes and a 151-81 match mark (65.1 winning percentage).