Four teams are set to appear at the Champions of the Sand tournament
The restart of international competition for beach volleyball is set to take place in February and March with FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour events in Doha, Qatar, but four of the top women’s teams in the world will have a little bit of an early taste of it this weekend in Rio de Janeiro when they compete at the Champions of the Sand exhibition event on Sunday, January 31.
Brazil’s Agatha Bednarczuk/Eduarda ‘Duda’ Lisboa and Ana Patricia Ramos/Rebecca Cavalcanti, Canada’s Heather Bansley/Brandie Wilkerson and Germany’s Laura Ludwig/Margareta Kozuch will all appear at the one-day event that will take place at the foot of the Sugar Loaf mountain, one of the most iconic landscapes in the Brazilian city.
The exhibition tournament will feature three 15-point sets with the Brazilian teams facing the foreign duos. The opening set will feature Agatha/Duda and Ludwig/Kozuch in a rematch of the 2019 FIVB World Tour Finals, which was won by the Germans.
The second set will have Rebecca and Ana Patricia going up against Wilkerson and Bansley, who are coached by Brazilian Ricardo ‘Rico’ de Freitas. The highlight of the event will be the third and final set when Canadians and Germans will team up against the Brazilians for a four-a-side match.
“We really missed competing internationally last year and that will give us a little taste of it,” Agatha, a silver medallist at the Rio 2016 Olympics and a 2015 world champion, said. “It will be fun to play the international teams and see what they look like. And I’m super excited for the four-a-side match. I’ve never played in that format and I’m curious to see how that will work out for us.”
The event also brings the 35-year-old Ludwig to the city where she secured the biggest victory of her career. The German will play nearly four kilometers away from Copacabana beach, the location where former she and former partner Kira Walkenhorst claimed a gold medal at the Rio 2016 Olympics. The duo went on to win the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championship the next year.
“Returning to Rio is always exciting,” the German star commented. “It’s our first international event outside of Europe in quite some time and playing with the Brazilians and the Canadians will be extremely valuable for us after several months working on our technique. It will help to prepare us for the start of the season and we’re pleased we managed to get away from the Northern Hemisphere winter and come here to train outside, get some sun and play high-level beach volleyball. We’re looking forward to meeting the Canadians and playing alongside them.”
The event will mark the end of an even longer wait for Bansley and Wilkerson. While the Brazilians and Germans got to play on their national tours and at the King of the Court event in Utrecht last September, in 2020, the Canadians haven’t been featured in official competition since they appeared at a World Tour event in Chetumal, Mexico, in November 2019.
“We’re looking forward to competing again and feeling the pressure of a real match,” Bansley reflected. “The event will be short but very intense and I expect great matches against the Brazilians.”
The event, which was first scheduled for March 2020 but had to be postponed due to the pandemic, will be played without spectators, but the expectations are that it will cause a huge impact on the Brazilian beach volleyball scene as it will be broadcast live by TV Globo for the entire country.
“The Olympics in Rio were fascinating and we’re honoured to bring beach volleyball back to the city, which is the main hub of the sport in Brazil,” Marcelo Hargreaves, the COO of promoters Effect Sport, remarked. “Brazilians always have high expectations about their top teams and it will be fun to see how they match up with some of the best teams in the world ahead of the Tokyo Olympics.”
