The FIVB beach volleyball world tour has been active this month, but it has been all one-star events scattered across Southeast Asia with one more in Sweden. Those events are great for spotting up and coming teams (like young Americans Lara Dykstra and Cassie House who picked up two golds and a fifth place finish this month) but one-stars won’t get anyone to Tokyo and movement on the Olympic rankings chart has been non-existent recently. But that is about to change with a very important four-star tournament about to get underway in Xiamen, China. We are in for a treat as nearly all the top teams signed up to play this one.

To give you an idea of how deep the field is, on the men’s side defending Olympic gold medalist Alison and his new partner, Álvaro Filho, had to win a country quota match just to get into the qualifiers. World champion Andre finds himself in the qualifiers instead of the main draw, too. Brazil will be on everyone’s mind because they are sending six very strong teams to China. Nearly all of them are new pairings on the world tour due to the major partner shuffle that has rippled through the Brazilian men’s teams. Since only two Brazilian teams can go to the Olympics, having so many of them at one four-star event will give us a good picture of which teams are most likely to emerge as their country’s representatives in Tokyo. I am really looking forward to seeing how the new Evandro and Bruno pairing looks. However, almost any one of these new partnerships could win Olympic Gold in 2020.

There are 60 men’s teams playing in China this week, so it is far more than a Brazil story. The hosts, China have seven teams entered, but it will take a major home sand push to see any of them become a factor in the later rounds. It will be very interesting to see if the white-hot form of the young Norwegians, Anders Mol and Christian Sorum, can continue from last season or if the world has come up with a plan to stop them. The Grimalt cousins from Chile are the inform team of the tour having won their last two tournaments. As the 11 seed, nobody will want to see “Los Primos” drawn into their pool. It is a field where any one of the top 17 teams could win it, and as mentioned above even some of the teams in the qualifiers could be a threat to end up on the podium.

Esteban Grimalt of Chile unloads a cannon during Olympic qualification back in 2011. He and his cousin, Marco, hope to continue their winning ways in Xiamen. Photo by Jorge Barrios Riquelme and used under creative commons license.

The women’s field is just as strong. The top team in the Olympic rankings, Rebecca Cavalcanti and Ana Patricia Silva have to start in the qualifiers. That means they have to play an extra day and avoid a very costly slip up in the qualifiers to stay on top of the race to Tokyo. The number one seeds in Xieman, Barbora Hermannová and Marketa Slukova of the Czech Republic, weren’t the most consistent team on the beach last year, but they played very well in the big money events. They came out winners of the Vienna Major and finished second at the World Tour finals in Hamburg last year. This will be the their first outing on the tour in 2019. The hosts, China, are much more likely to make an impact on the women’s side than on the men’s. The new Chinese partnership of experienced Olympians Chen Xue and Fan Wang has been very successful and is already third in the Olympic rankings. The top ranked team in the world, Canada’s Heather Bansley and Brandie Wilkerson are the second seed for this event and fellow Canadians Sarah Pavan and Melissa Humana-Paredes, last year’s Xiamen winners, are the fourth seed. Olympic champ Laura Ludwig was given a wild card entry with her new partner Margareta Kozuch and will be a very formidable 19th seed.

Xue Chen of China cuts to the open court at the Beijing Olympics in 2008. She is hoping to see success on home sand this weekend. Photo by Craig Maccubbin and used under Creative Commons license.

It is going to be a very exciting tournament that is sure to cause a lot of movement in the Olympic rankings. It’s the first outing for many top teams as they try to find their form heading into what is going to be a thrilling summer on the sand.