A-1 Grand Slam Beach volleyball Men’s tournament overview
This year Men’s A-1 Grand Slam 10 Beach Volleyball hit the breezy shores of Klagenfurt, Austria. The tournament started off on 27th of July, 2010 and competition is on till 1st of August, for the prize money of 300,000 US dollars, which is equal to the amount fixed for Women champions of the A-1 Grand Slam. The men’s tournament follows women’s playoff matches of A-1 Grand Slam in FIVB World Tour. The tournament continues for one week, where the women’s and men’s teams share a total amount of 43,500 US dollar for first place prizes.
The women’s Main Draw started off on Wednesday and 16 teams were eliminated up till Saturday. The remaining 16 teams were able to earn a competitive edge and stay in the tournament by delivering a good performance. The Women’s side is heavily influenced by Brazilian top-seeded Juliana Felisberta Silva and Larissa Franca while on the other hand; American Phil Dalhausser/Todd Roggers is dominating the men side so far. The men’s event is in progress but the medal matches will be played tomorrow on Sunday 31st July 2010.The whole men’s and women’s event is sponsored by one of the top finance groups of Austria, the Volksbank.
At this time of the year, Klagenfurt the capital of federal state Carinthia is in full swing with the festive activities of beach volleyball, where international women’s and men’s teams are scuffling to achieve the top spot and struggling hard to take the gold home.
The former gold-medallist American pair, Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers made their mark in the early matches of the tournament while Chinese Penggen Wu/Linyin Xu is also among the other victorious players by defeating the teams from Kazakhstan and Latvia.
Top-seeded Dalhausser and Rogers seem pretty tough in this competition. They have various other achievements to their names which help them boost their morale. They have won 5 gold medals in the previous eight FIVB seasons.
The potential competitors and sturdy rivals of the American team, second-seeded Wu and Xu from China, are also in a very good form this season. They launched a complete authority in the last Russian Grand Slam which happened in Moscow last month. The Chinese pair showed home to Dalhausser and Rogers, and seized the gold medal but again both rival teams are head-to-head in this competition. Wu and Xu also performed very well in the World Series 13 matches last week in Marseille, France where they grabbed the final victory.
Next in line is the Brazilian team which comprises of Alison Cerutti and Emanuel Rego. They missed the last week’s Marseille stop in France for some odd reasons but they are back in the game now. In the last two Grand Slam tournaments in Norway and Switzerland, they were placed fifth and seventeenth respectively. Currently they are moving ahead with an average pace and initially they have defeated the Brazilian and Spanish teams in their pool. The US Casey Jennings and Brad Keenan are likely to give them a hard-time in the next game.
The Latvian players Martins Plavins and Janis Smedins regret about their defeat in the last Marseille event in France last week. They lost the final match to their utmost rivals Wu and Xu, but this time around, they are all ready to take revenge. They have defeated 23rd-seeded Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Ruslans Sorokins, and also outplayed Brazilian seventh-seeded Marcio Araujo and Ricardo Santos.
In addition, the last week’s third position holders in Marseille were the Polish sixth-seeded Grzegorz Fijalek and Mariusz Prudel. They are challenged by the Brazilian 11th-seeded Benjamin Insfran and Bruno Oscar Schmidt in the current A-1 Grand Slam tournament.
The final four matches of the tournament will be held on 1st August which will conclude victorious pair.
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