World Championship Centre Point of Ambitious Beach Volleyball World Tour Calendar

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This year's World Tour will feature five Grand Slams, a new Major Series involving four tournaments, a World Tour Finals in the United States and six Opens

FIVB: Lausanne, Switzerland, January 2015 – The FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships The Netherlands 2015 will headline a bumper year of beach volleyball action. But what else is in store for the most dynamic and ambitious season yet?

The Netherlands will welcome the world’s top beach volleyball players from June 26-July 5 as the main event of this year’s calendar. All eyes will be on the cities of The Hague, Apeldoorn, Amsterdam and Rotterdam as, for the first time, the competition unfolds across four locations. A total of 96 teams - 48 per gender – will compete with the qualification process currently being completed across the five continental confederations.

Outside of that, athletes can look forward to an action-packed World Tour with five Grand Slams, a new Major Series involving four tournaments, a World Tour Finals in the United States and six Opens, totalling 16 tournaments.

The inaugural World Tour Finals will take place in a US city yet to be confirmed from September 29 to October 4 and will feature the top eight teams per gender based on a cumulative ranking of points from Grand Slams, Majors and Opens.

The Rio 2016 Olympic Games will also be on the mind of many players with the qualification process including all FIVB World Tour events (except the World Tour Finals) up until June 13. This will count towards the Olympic Ranking in order to determine the 15 vacancies for each gender which will take part in the 2016 Olympics. The provisional Olympic Ranking will be available on the FIVB website after each event.

The double gender Fuzhou Open will begin proceedings for the second year in a row from April 21-26. This will be followed by six Grand Slams in Moscow, Russia from May 26-31, St. Petersburg, USA from June 16-21, Yokohama, Japan from July 21-26, Long Beach, USA from August 18-23 and Poland (event to be confirmed) from August 25-30.

Molly will not be pleased to miss school tomorrow. Our intention had nothing to do with having Christina and the girls look after us. The goal was R&R. But things have changed and what happened with their visit was a godsend to us. They went to the market for us and left us enough food in the fridge and pantry to last a few days.

Now we do not need to go out for every meal. We can eat breakfast leisurely. Last evening they brought everything from the lockers. It look them ten minutes while it would have taken us an hour or more. But the most important part of their visit was their presence. Last evening we ate pizza watching the sunset while sitting on the balcony. It was delightful.

They diverted us with their presence. We are so grateful they came. Now I will be happy when they get home.

The Fuzhou Open will kick off the calendar as it did in 2014

A new innovative and dynamic Major Series including four tournaments will complete the schedule for next summer. Porec in Croatia will welcome a Major from June 2-7 (venue to be confirmed), which will be followed by other Majors in Stavanger, Norway from June 9-14, Gstaad, Switzerland from July 7-12 and Germany (venue to be confirmed) from September 1-6.

Five Opens will also take place in Lucerne, Switzerland from May 12-17, Prague, Czech Republic from May 26-31, Istanbul, Turkey from August 11-16, Sochi, Russia from September 8-13 and Xiamen, China from September 22-27. The event in Prague will be a women-only single gender tournament.

• Four Open events will then follow, which will form the first part of the 2015-16 Beach Volleyball Calendar. These will take place in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico from October 13-18, Thailand (women only - venue to be confirmed) from November 3-8, Doha, Qatar from November 17-21 (men only) and Mangaung, South Africa from December 8-13.

The FIVB continues to work towards the realization of a long term calendar with the aim of creating sustainability for the future. On this matter, the 2016, 2017 and 2018 tentative calendars will be presented for approval at the next FIVB Board of Administration in April, 2015

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