This is pathway number three, and by far the coolest for beach volleyball fans in the run up to the Olympics. This is the Olympic rankings. Fifteen men’s and women’s beach volleyball teams will qualify for the Tokyo Olympics through the Olympic rankings. The firsts two paths get teams to Tokyo by winning a single, high pressure event. The 15 qualifiers through the Olympic rankings system have to be at the top of their game over an 18 month period. So, here we go. Let’s checkout the third pathway to qualify for the 2020 Olympic games in beach volleyball.



Note: I’m maintaining a cool interactive Olympic rankings table for the men and women and a bunch of country quota tables for nations with multiple highly ranked teams. Check back here for updates a few days after each tournament ends and the FIVB releases the official results.

Pathway Number 3– the Olympic Rankings

Starting last September and continuing until June 2020, every FIVB World Tour event and all of the Continental Finals will be awarding points for the Olympic rankings. When the Olympic rankings qualifying door slams shut on June 15th, 2020 the top 15 teams will be in. Points from every teams 12 best performances in the qualifying period are counted. That means teams that play in more than 12 events during that time period get to throw out their worst results and just count their best 12. If you’ve followed the FIVB beach tour, you know that not all events are created equal. Five star events are worth a lot more points than 1 star events. The bad news is, there are only two five star events on the tour this year. So teams that can score as many points as possible in the lower tier tournaments may still have a chance to get into the Tokyo field. It also means that if a top team has some bad luck at the five-star events in Gstaad and Vienna this summer, they may have a hard time making up points elsewhere.



Points by FIVB World Tour Star Rating Rank 5 star 4 star 3 star 2 star 1 star 1st 1200 800 600 400 200 2nd 1080 720 540 360 180 3rd 960 640 480 320 160 4th 840 560 420 280 140 5th 720 480 360 240 120 9th 600 400 300 200 100 17th 480 320 240 160 80 25th 360 240 180 120 N/A 33rd 240 160 120 N/A N/A 41st 60 40 30 N/A N/A

Three #BeachWorldTour events as a team, 3 medals for Russia's 🇷🇺 Oleg Stoyanovskiy & Viacheslav Krasilnikov! Their #DELABeachOpen 🥇 follows 🥈 in Yangzhou 🇨🇳 & 🥉 in Las Vegas 🇺🇸 for a big start to the 2018-19 season! #BeachVolleyball pic.twitter.com/81yhhDRNxe — Volleyball World (@FIVBVolleyball) January 6, 2019 Russia’s Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Viacheslav Kraslinokov are currently on top of the men’s Olympic Rankings.

Planning a world tour summer

I think that this means there will be some interesting strategy considerations in planning this summer’s calendar for hopeful Olympians. Obviously all the best teams will be playing in the four and five-star events. You have to have enough world tour points (slightly different than Olympic qualification ranking points, but we won’t get into that here) to be included in the field for big events. That means, if you are a mid level pair that is trying to break through, you’ll be stuck in the qualifier rounds at three star events and you may not get a place at all in the four and five stars. Some great teams that have just come on the scene will have to work their way into the Olympic rankings conversation by dominating the smaller events first.



In events of every level, the top ranked teams get straight into the ‘main draw’ while the lower ranked teams have to battle through the qualifiers. One loss in the qualifiers and you are out, meaning very few points and a tiny amount of prize money if any at all. Success on the qualifying day, means you’ll be a low seed in a pool of higher ranked main draw teams. If you’re like me and love cheering for the underdog, watch the qualifiers in pool play every Friday. That is where the fun stories can be found in my opinion. Teams have to win at least once in their pool to make it to the knockout round and teams that win their pool get a first round bye.



Playing in a small tournament that the top teams aren’t interested in, makes it possible for lower ranked teams to win important ranking points and some prize money to help pay for their next airplane ticket. It is a tough choice though, because many one and two-star events are located in hard to get to locations. Traveling to Cambodia and China can be expensive for teams from Europe or North and South America. A poor finish in a two-star event means you spent a lot of money and time and gained nothing other than a beach volleyball adventure story to tell your friends. Many partnerships start to show cracks when an expensive two-star journey ends in frustration and disappointment.

Planning a summer calendar is especially challenging for American teams that have the domestic AVP pro tour to consider. AVP tournaments have the upside of pretty good prize money, much lower travel expenses and freedom from the worries of international travel. On the flip side for ambitious American teams, AVP events don’t offer any FIVB ranking points and won’t get them any closer to Tokyo.

Who’s on top right now?

At this point in the Olympic qualifying cycle, most teams have only played in four or five tournaments. Some of the top teams have played in even fewer, so the current rankings don’t give a complete picture. That being said, it has been fun to see Rebecca Cavalcanti and Ana Patricia Silva put all kinds of pressure on the other Brazilian women’s teams by racing to the top spot in the Olympic rankings with their early success in the qualifying cycle. Remember that only two teams from each country can qualify for the Olympics, so in a country like Brazil finishing in the top 15 in the world probably won’t be enough since the Brazilian ladies are expected to have several top teams. Country quotas will be the topic of a future blog post, so come back for more on that later, but keep in mind that if a country has three or more teams in the top 15, only the top two will qualify. That means teams ranked 16th or lower may get a chance to play in Tokyo, since the third and fourth teams from any nation won’t go, even if they are in the top 15.

Women's Olympic Rankings as of March 25, 2019. Rank Name Country Points 1 Rebecca Cavalcanti and Ana Patricia Silva Brazil 2,680 2 Emily Day and Betsi Flint United States 2,180 3 Fan Wang and Chen Xue China 2,060 4 Marta Menegatti and Viktoria Orsi Toth Italy 2,020 5 Miki Ishii and Megumi Murakami Japan 1,960 5 Alix Klineman and April Ross United States 1,960 7 Heather Bansley and Brandie Wilkerson Canada 1,940 8 Elize Maia and Maria Clara Salgado Brazil 1,780 9 Brooke Sweat and Kerri Walsh Jennings United States 1,680 10 Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan Canada 1,640 11 Kelly Claes and Sarah Sponcil United States 1,600 12 Xinxin Wang and Xinyi Xia China 1,480 13 Michaela Kubickova and Michala Kvapilova Czech Republic 1,440 14 Angela Lobato and Amaranta Navarro Spain 1,420 15 Brittany Howard and Kelly Reeves United States 1,400

On the men’s side, Russia’s Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Viacheslav Kraslinokov have a big lead at this point. But the Chilean cousins, Marco and Esteban Grimalt, rocketed up the rankings after a remarkable pair of weekends earlier this month. The cousins had played together in 59 FIVB events since 2011 and only won once, so nobody expected them to win back to back tournaments and gain 1400 points in one week. That, together with a 17 place finish in Las Vegas has them in third place in the Olympic rankings at the moment. It will be interesting to see if they can put together enough good results in 9 more qualifying events to earn a place in Tokyo. They’re certainly off to a great start.

Men's World Tour Rankings as of March 25, 2019 Rank Name Country Points 1 Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy Russia 2,560 2 Cherif Samba and Ahmed Tijan Qatar 1,880 3 Marco Grimalt and Esteban Grimalt Chile 1,720 4 Taras Myskiv and Valeriy Samoday Russia 1,700 5 Robin Seidl and Philipp Waller Austria 1,560 6 Sam Pedlow and Sam Schachter Canada 1,500 7 Tri Bourne and Trevor Crabb United States 1,480 8 Cole Durant and Damien Schumann Australia 1,440 8 Ondrej Perusic and David Schweiner Czech Republic 1,440 8 Saymon Barbosa and Gustavo "Guto" Carvalhaes Brazil 1,440 8 Ilya Leshukov and Konstantin Semenov Russia 1,440 12 Maciej Rudol and Jakub Szalankiewicz Poland 1,380 12 Miles Evans and Billy Kolinske United States 1,380 14 Youssef Krou and Edouard Rowlandson France 1,340 15 Bruno Oscar Schmidt and Pedro Solberg Brazil 1,280 15 Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen Netherlands 1,280 15 Anders Mol and Christian Sorum Norway 1,280 15 Michal Bryl and Grzegorz Fijalek Poland 1,280

Chile's 🇨🇱 Marco & Esteban Grimalt @PrimosGrimalt are the Sydney 🇦🇺 3⭐ men's 🥇 winners! They defeat Italy's 🇮🇹 Enrico Rossi & Adrian Carambula 2-0 (21-18, 21-12) to win the title! https://t.co/87siKSbmuC #BeachWorldTour #BeachVolleyball #VolleyFestManly pic.twitter.com/UAA4SKGloq — Volleyball World (@FIVBVolleyball) March 10, 2019 Back to back victories have these Chilean cousins near the top of the Olympic rankings.

Remember to check out the interactive men’s and women’s Olympic Rankings pages and visit again after every weekend’s tournaments to see the progress of your favorite teams.

Next up is an explanation of how five teams will qualify for Tokyo through the Continental Cups. I’m going to have to do a lot of research to write this one.