Lausanne, Switzerland, January 17, 2019 – Anders Mol and Christian Sorum’s phenomenal run of success in 2018 has been rewarded by the pair starting 2019 in first place in the FIVB Beach Volleyball Men’s World Rankings.
It means that the Norwegian duo will be the team to beat when the Hamburg 2019 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships take place from June 28-July 7.
Teams win 600 points for gold at an FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour 5-Star tournament, 400 for victory at a 4-Star and 300 for winning a 3-Star.
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Mol and Sorum are first with 5,960 points, Latvia’s Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins are second with 5,500 points and Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen of the Netherlands third with 5,400 points.
After a slow start to 2018 Mol, 21, and Sorum, 22, won their first World Tour gold in July with victory over Spain’s Pablo Herrera and Adrian Gavira in the Gstaad 5-Star gold medal match. A week later they became European champions and a fortnight on at the Vienna 5-Star they won a second World Tour gold.
As such they began the Hamburg 2018 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Finals in red-hot form, and they lived up to their billing as favourites by securing gold with a win over Poland’s Michal Bryl and Grzegorz Fijalek.
Smedins and Samoilovs' second place is a reflection that they won more than one tournament in 2018.The Latvians topped the podium at the Espinho and Moscow 4-Star tournaments, and also won silver at the CEV European Championships, and bronze at the Fort Lauderdale 5-Star and Warsaw 4-Star.
Brouwer and Meeuwsen are the only team in the top 10 to know what it takes to win a World Championship, having claimed gold at Mazury 2013.
In 2018 the Dutch won bronze in front of their home fans at The Hague 4-Star and claimed gold at the Doha 4-Star. They were also winners at the events in Aalsmeer and Huntington Beach.
European teams claim nine of the top 10 places in the World Rankings. The exception is Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan, who sit in ninth place.
They won World Tour bronze at the Vienna 5-Star and Doha 4-Star, and also topped the podium at the Asian Championships.
Poland and Russia are represented by two teams. Poland’s Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak are in fifth, with Fijalek and Bryl sixth.
For Russia Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Viacheslav Krasilnikov, who started the year by winning gold at The Hague 4-Star are ranked eighth, while Konstantin Semenov and Ilya Leshukov, who joined them on the podium with bronze, are 10th.