OLYMPICS/ Preliminaries
Beach volleyball official gives thumbs-up to Olympic venue
(Xinhua)
Updated: 2007-08-13 17:18
Blair Davis Harrison, a member of FIVB Control Committee, gave laurels on Sunday to the Olympic beach volleyball venue, located within Chaoyang park in the eastern part of China's capital.
Harrison, who is supervising the organization work of the 2007 beach volleyball women's challenger, a test event for next year's Beijing Olympics, said at the pre-tournament news briefing that the beach volleyball venue in Beijing is "magnificent".
"I have been to all the beach volleyball venues of the Olympics with the sport being played, I think the one in Beijing is really magnificent," said Harrison.
"But I like the one in Australia best, because I am from Australia," he added with a beaming face.
"The setting of the venue here is in the middle of the city, that is good for the athletes. The park is excellent, and the facilities are good.
"Beach volleyball is one of the top sports in the world, we saw a great world championship in Switzerland two weeks ago and now we all look forward to next year's Olympics."
With a large area of water, Chaoyang park is one of the major parks in Beijing, and the 12,000-seat ground is the exact venue for the beach volleyball tournament in the Olympic Games.
The week-long tournament has attracted a field of 24 duet teams. However, the top 24 teams in the SWATCH-FIVB World Beach Volleyball Tour will not feature in the event as they are all busy competing in Norway for qualifier of Olympics, according to Harrison.
The 24 teams will be divided into six pools in the 38-match preliminaries. The top two teams from each pool will advance automatically to the 16-team final phase, with the two best third-ranked teams and two lucky losing sides. In total 54 matches will be played, including 16 in the final phase.
The challenger will be held on August 13 to 19, and a total of 50,000 US dollars will be paid as prize money, with the champion winning 9,000 US dollars.
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