FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour in USA for FIVB Long Beach Grand Slam

Giving the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) a continuing strong presence in the United States the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar lists a 2016 return for the fourth straight year for the double-gender $800,000 FIVB Long Beach Grand Slam. The Long Beach, Calif. event will be held August 23-28.

 

The 2016 FIVB Long Beach Grand Slam will be the first event immediately following the 2016 Rio Olympic Games in Brazil.

 

With the first USA visit being held in Miami, Florida in 1994, the 1997 event was the inaugural FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships, held in the Tennis Center stadium at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA).

 

Also on the current 2016 FIVB World Tour schedule is the double-gender $150,000 FIVB Cincinnati Open in Ohio, USA, on May 17-22.

 

At the FIVB Long Beach Grand Slam last year winning men’s gold was Brazil’s Alison Cerutti/Bruno Oscar Schmidt while topping the women’s podium was Brazil’s Talita Antunes/Larissa Franca.

 

Through the 2015 events, the United States has hosted a total of 28 FIVB World Tour events (14 men, 14 women) with Brazil is tied for the lead in the medal count for men and leads the women.  In the men’s totals after 14 events in the USA, Brazil and the USA have 14 medals each, followed by Argentina, Norway, Spain and Switzerland with two each and with one men’s medal each in the USA are Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and Poland.

 

After 14 FIVB World Tour women’s events held in the United States through 2015, Brazil leads the medal parade with 21 total medals followed by the USA with 14, Australia and Germany with three each and with one women’s medal in the USA is the Slovak Republic.

 

The 2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar began with three Open events at the end of 2015. The remainder of the 2016 calendar will include multiple FIVB Open and multiple FIVB Grand Slam events along with more Swatch FIVB Major Series events, and the second Swatch FIVB World Tour Finals.  Highlight of the calendar will be the 2016 Rio Olympic Games in Brazil featuring 24 teams in each gender.

 

Long Beach is a city situated in Los Angeles County in Southern California, on the Pacific coast of the United States. The city is the 36th-largest city in the nation and the seventh-largest in California with its population of nearly 475,000.

 

The city is a dominant maritime center of the United States. The Port of Long Beach is the United States' second busiest container port and one of the world's largest shipping ports. The city also maintains a large oil industry with the substance being found both underground and offshore.

 

Long Beach is one of 11 U.S. cities that have hosted an international FIVB beach volleyball event. Others have been Atlanta, Carson, Calif., Chicago, Clearwater, Fla., Fort Lauderdale, Fla., Hermosa Beach, Calif., Los Angeles, Miami, New York and St. Petersburg, Fla. The event in Atlanta was the 1996 Olympic Games, the first at which Beach Volleyball was a medal sport. The event in Fort Lauderdale in 2015 was the inaugural swatch FIVB World Tour Finals.

 

The 2016 FIVB World Ranking system will again include FIVB Beach Volleyball Grand Slam and Open events along with additional pre-approved events at the inter-continental, continental and national levels.

 

Implemented in 2013, the format of all the FIVB Beach Volleyball international tournaments – whether FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships, FIVB Beach Volleyball Grand Slam or FIVB Beach Volleyball Open – are the same, featuring pool play followed by single elimination knockout rounds. While the FIVB World Championships had 48 teams, all other tournaments have 32 teams and begin with a qualification tournament in each gender to determine the final eight teams in the main draw fields.

 

Country quota playoffs are also held, as needed, to determine the final teams for qualification tournaments.

 

The 2014-2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball Continental Cup is back again this year as it completes its portion of the qualification process for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games in Brazil.

 

The first men’s FIVB World Tour event was played February 17-22, 1987 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil while the first women’s FIVB World Tour event in Brazil was played in 1993 in Rio de Janeiro. The women’s FIVB World Tour held its first tournament in Spain in 1992.