Olympic pre-qualification round pools and teams: Volleyball update
The highly anticipated pools for the Olympic pre-qualification tournaments for volleyball have recently been set. The organisers were unable to decide the pools earlier because the 2011 European Championship had not reached its close and
the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) had not chosen the wild cards for the upcoming FIVB World Cup that is scheduled to take place in Japan.
The pre-qualification matches for the London 2012 Olympics are chalked up to be started in November. Some teams had already booked their place in the tournament by topping the elimination round that was held in September. The rest of the teams that are now
included in the pre-qualification tournament got there after being seeded according to the rankings in the final round of the 2011 CEV Volleyball European Championship.
The teams that are successful in the pre-qualification tournament will head on to the next step that is scheduled to be the European Qualification Tournament in line to take place in May next year. The qualification round will be hosted by two countries
including Bulgaria, where the matches will be played in Sofia and Turkey, where the matches will be played in Istanbul. The women will find themselves in Turkey whereas the men will be heading for Bulgaria.
The pre-qualification matches of the men’s volleyball squads will take place from November 22nd and last till the 27th of the same month. The teams have been divided into three pools. Pool A consists of Slovakia, Turkey, Estonia, Austria,
Spain and Montenegro. On the other hand, France, Czech Republic, Belgium, Germany, Greece and Latvia make up Pool B. The third and final pool of the tournament, Pool C, is composed of Finland, Slovenia, Portugal, Croatia, Netherlands and Ukraine.
The women’s pre qualification matches are scheduled to start earlier than the men’s as they are slotted for the 8th November till 13thNovember. Pool A of the women’s team consists of Russia, Spain, Romania, Belgium, Slovakia as well
as Austria while Pool B features Netherlands, France, Croatia, Israel, Greece and Sweden. The teams that make up Pool C are Czech Republic, Azerbaijan, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Hungary and Denmark.
The Olympics will take place in the capital of England for the third time in the history of the city. After having hosted the Olympics Games next year, London will become the first city in the world to have played host to the Olympics Games for three times.
The first time that the Olympic Games came to London was in 1908. It was a long time after that that the Olympic Games made their way back to the city as in 1948 and the people of London saw the Games in their neighborhood for a second time.
Tags: