This past weekend in Ostrava, 18 months of Olympic Beach Volleyball qualification came to an end. Today, 18 of 24 qualifying spots per gender have been earned. Six spots remain per gender, left to be filled. The first of those spots is the wildcard allotted to the host nation this year, the French Federation. France is expected to pick their wildcard teams later this week.
The remaining five spots will be won in the five continental qualifying tournaments, beginning this weekend with the European tournament, the CEV Beach Volley Nations Cup Final in Jurmala, Latvia. The remaining four continental qualification tournaments will take place in the following 2 weeks.
We’ll have about six weeks to break down the field and start to pick some odds, favorites, storylines before the Olympics gets going on July 27th. If you haven’t already, give the latest Road to Paris episode a watch, where Travis Mewhirter breaks it all down.
The biggest story from a USA perspective would have to be Chase Budinger and Miles Evans, qualifying for the Olympics with a Trevor Crabb/Theo Brunner first round qualifier loss to Germans Pfretzschner/Winter.
Over 17 months of Olympic qualification, Chase and Miles did not take a qualifying position until 4 days before the qualification window ended. Take a look at this amazing graph by TruVolley.
Here’s where it gets fun.
Instagram user 8thstreetmeat took to the comments on the above post to remark about the flat green line for Trevor Crabb and Theo Brunner over the last month of qualification. The insinuation being that Trev and Theo came up short at the finish line. Never one to shy away from a confrontation, Trevor Crabb responded:
Lucky for us all, Miles Evans responded, and what ensued was a wildly entertaining back and forth between the two.
Let’s score the fight, shall we?
In Espinho, Trevor and Theo got knocked out by Norway’s 2nd team in the qualifiers, a team that has not qualified for the Olympics via points. Chase and Miles went 2-1 in pool play including a loss to 2024 Olympians and 8 seed Evandro and Arthur and a very important win over 4 seed George and Andre. They went on to lose to Ehlers and Wickler in the quarterfinals, a 1-2 record against Olympic teams in Espinho.
In Stare Jablonki, both teams found themselves in the same pool. Chase and Miles had the easier first game, playing and beating the Dutch 4th team in 3 sets. However, Trevor and Theo had the opportunity to break pool with a win over the SAME TEAM, and lost in 3 sets, going winless in pool play and heading home with a 19th place. Chase and Miles would beat Spain (an Olympic qualifying team) in the round of 16 before losing to the eventual bronze medalists, Boermans and de Groot in the quarterfinals.
In Ostrava, both teams bounced out of the quarterfinals, with Trevor and Theo playing the better team in a very solid German Pfretzschner and Winter.
The final score, Trevor and Theo won zero of their 4 matches in the last 3 tournaments, losing all 4 matches to non-Olympic teams. Miles and Chase won 7 of their last 12 matches over the last 3 tournaments, and went 2-3 against Olympic teams in the process. Combine all that with the final line from Miles:
“I’ll make sure to tell that to @lebron when I see him at the Olympics”
TKO, decisive victory for Miles Evans.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge Trevor Crabb fan. I love the salty, spicy attitude he brings to the sand every time he steps out there. But this one felt more like sour grapes. An understandable attitude from a guy who just spent 18 months working towards a goal, only to have it slip away, steps from the finish line. But this one was a comment section battle lost for kingcrabb808.
We’ll talk about all this and more tomorrow on Bet The Beach Live on YouTube, 9P ET, 6P PT. Be there.
Chris DeTurk – June 11, 2024
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