Beijing to host beach volleyball again
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Three years after hosting beach volleyball at the 2008 Olympic Games, Chaoyang Park will see the world's top players gather again from June 6-11 when the World Tour Grand Slam series makes its Beijing debut.
"We are really happy and excited to come back to Beijing. We have really good memories of the Olympic Games and I believe it is great news for all the players to know that they can play here again," Dirk Decher, a technical adviser of the Federation Internationale de Volleyball (FIV), the sport's ruling body, said on Tuesday.
"We really missed the wonderful site and I believe the fans missed the players too," Decher said of the Olympic venue, which claims its sand from Hainan Island and boasts a world-leading seating capacity of 12,000.
As a qualification tournament for the London Games and the most prestigious event on the sport's calendar after the Olympics and World Championship, the Beijing Grand Slam is expected to attract more than 400 men's and women's players.
Among them will be the top Chinese pairs of Xue Chen and Zhang Xi, the bronze medalists in the women's event at the Beijing Olympics, and the men's world No 2 combination of Xu Linyin and Wu Penggen, who won the Moscow Grand Slam last year.
"You should be proud of your players. China is young in this sport but is rising very fast. You now have top players in the men's and women's sections," said Decher.
Chaoyang Park is in line to host the event for the next five years and Beijing is the third Chinese city to hold a World Tour event - Shanghai joined the World Tour Open tournaments in 2004 and Sanya, Hainan province, followed in 2008.
The tournament in Beijing will be the first of six legs this year, followed by events in Norway, Switzerland, Poland, Austria and Russia from June to September.
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