French beach volleyball aiming to shine at paris 2024 with volleyball empowerment
- Beach Volley News
- 15 mag
- Tempo di lettura: 3 min
Oct 12, 2023 Beach Volleyball, Development, Technical / Coach
France has boosted its chances to do well in beach volleyball at next year’s Olympic Games it is hosting in Paris by taking advantage of the substantial opportunities the FIVB Volleyball Empowerment programme has to offer.
French beach volleyball has so far been allocated a total of CHF 590,000 in coach support, helping their federation hire Brazilian specialist Lissandro Dias Carvalho and the rest of his staff to work with the teams all year round and establish and follow a long-term vision for success.
According to the latest World Ranking update just before France hosted its second Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour Paris Elite16 tournament at the iconic Roland-Garros Stadium, Youssef Krou and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat (pictured in the main photo) were the highest ranked French pair, standing 11th in the men’s chart. They have collected three Beach Pro Tour medals so far, including gold at the Torquay Elite16 in Australia last December. In the women’s World Ranking, Lezana Placette and Alexia Richard were in number 21, after climbing all the way up to number 14 earlier this year. Last November, Placette and Richard reached the semifinals of the Cape Town Elite16 in South Africa.
“These are two great examples of success and performances the federation wants to maintain until the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris in order to ensure places for two teams in each gender,” Tanguy added. “Krou and Gauthier-Rat’s 11th place in the ranking is historic for our federation for at least the last 15 years.”
As the host nation, France are already entitled to have one pair per gender compete in the Olympic beach volleyball tournament, but they are aiming at having one more join in through the regular qualification paths. And they certainly have the players to achieve it.
Rising stars Arthur Canet and Teo Rotar, who won the U19 world title in 2021 and a U19 world bronze in 2022, triumphed as U20 European champions this year and then claimed their first gold at the senior level at the Montpellier Futures. The French teens climbed to number 30 in the men’s World Ranking, just above another well-known French pair, Calvin Aye and Quincy Aye, in number 31, while the pair of the two high-level indoor players Julien Lyneel and Remi Bassereau, specially created with the Paris 2024 beach volleyball competition in mind, climbed to number 35.
On the women’s side, the leading duo has the back-up of a second pair, consisting of 27-year-old Aline Chamereau and 22-year-old Clemence Vieira, who consistently medalled at their last three consecutive Futures events and stand at number 56 in the ranking.
French beach volleyball’s long-term vision goes far beyond next year’s Olympic Games as the real objective is long-term sustainable international success.
“The goal at the Paris Olympics will be to do everything to win a medal,” Tanguy said. “Performing and winning will be the key to establishing our French teams at the highest level. In the longer term, the goal would be to continue to perform in order to stay in the top 20 of the World Ranking and win tickets to the next Olympics.”
The representatives of the French federation found the whole process of applying for and receiving Volleyball Empowerment support quite easy.
“The FIVB Volleyball Empowerment is an accessible and facilitating process for the national federations. It manages to target our needs in terms of performance and progress,” FFVB President Tanguy stated. “I am very pleased with this support that is managing to take French beach volleyball to a new level, even more with the Paris 2024 Olympics coming up.”
“We benefited from FIVB’s sympathetic ear. Our interlocutors saw that we had initiated an ambitious project for the beach in 2018, and the support provided in short time was very effective,” Guiget added. “We share the ambition to make beach volleyball shine at the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.”
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