Just hours after the flame of the Games of the XXXIII Olympiad lights the Olympic cauldron, the Paris 2024 beach volleyball tournament will get underway nearby, with USA’s Miles Partain & Andrew Benesh and Cuba’s Noslen Diaz & Jorge Alayo first hitting the sand at the Games’ most picturesque venue at the foot of the Eiffel Tower on July 27 at 14:00 local time (12:00 UTC). The stellar line-up for the men’s tournament promises huge battles and plenty of excitement on the way to the Olympic podium.
For the first stage of the tournament, the 24 participating teams are split into six round-robin pools of four. The six pool winners, the six pool runners-up and the two best ranked third-placed teams will qualify directly to the eighthfinals. The remaining four third-placed teams will move on to a sixteenthfinal round, the so called “lucky loser” playoffs. From then on, it will be single-elimination playoffs that also go through the quarterfinals and the semifinals, and eventually lead to the medal matches at the event’s climax.
The number one team in the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Ranking and two-time reigning European champions, Sweden’s David Ahman & Jonatan Hellvig, who have been dominating the world of beach volleyball for the past 12 months, are first-time Olympians, but probably the heaviest favourites for the Olympic gold. The 22-year-old Swedish jump-setters will lead Pool A in the tough company of the Italian pairing of Samuele Cottafava and Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic silver medallist Paolo Nicolai and Tokyo 2020 Olympic bronze medallists and former world’s number one team Cherif Younousse & Ahmed Tijan of Qatar. Olympic rookies Izac Carracher & Mark Nicolaidis of Australia will be the first to challenge Ahman & Hellvig in Paris, in the second match on the tournament programme, starting at 15:00 (13:00) on Saturday.
