Doha: The three-way Swiss race for the country’s two available tickets to the women’s Olympic tournament at Paris 2024 is about to heat up in Doha this week as all three participating pairs are set to participate in the main draw of the Elite16 event in the Qatari capital, the first on the 2024 Volleyball World Beach Pro Tour.
One was pre-seeded directly into the main draw, starting on Wednesday. The other two advanced through Tuesday’s qualification grind. The race for the Brazilian quotas might get the mercury rising too, as Agatha Bednarczuk & Rebecca Cavalcanti, who are currently far behind the top two Brazilian duos in the ranking, showed no intention of giving up hope and made sure they qualify for the main draw. The men’s main draw in Doha is also going to set the stage for the Dutch, the American and the Italian Olympic tickets race with lower-ranked teams from those countries also qualifying on Tuesday.
Esmee Bobner & Zoe Verge-Depre, the highest ranked Swiss team in the women’s provisional Olympic ranking, achieved two difficult three-set wins on Tuesday, but pushed their way through to the main draw. They started off with a 2-1 (22-20, 15-21, 15-11) victory over Ukraine’s Maryna Hladun & Tetiana Lazarenko in the first qualification round and followed up with a 2-1 (18-21, 22-20, 15-7) comeback against France’s Lezana Placette & Alexia Richard.