Lausanne, Switzerland, September 7, 2020 - The last scheduled event on the 2019-2020 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar marks the first-ever FIVB-sanctioned beach volleyball event in Lithuania as the European country hosts men’s and women’s competition in the capital city of Vilnius.
When play begins on Thursday with qualification, Lithuania becomes the 64th country and 29th European nation to host an FIVB events since the start of sanctioned men’s events in February 1987 and women’s tournaments in August 1992.
Lithuania and Vilnius had previously hosted European events for men (twice) and women (four times) highlighted by a CEV Under-18 title for local favorites Ieva Dumbauskaite and Monika Povilaityte in August 2011. The next year in Cyprus, Dumbauskaite and Povilaityte topped the podium at the FIVB Beach Volleyball Under-19 World Championships in Larnaka.
Cyprus gold medals for Monika Povilaityte and Ieva Dumbauskaite of Lithuania.
The Vilnius tournament will be the 14th men’s and ninth women’s event on the 2019-2020 FIVB World Tour calendar as events have been held in Slovenia, Austria and France since the restart of the international circuit in late July after being stopped for over four months due to the pandemic.
Men's entry list
Women's entry list
Headlining Lithuania’s entries for the inaugural FIVB event in the country are previous World Tour medal winners Urte Andriukaityte, Dumbauskaite, Matas Navickas, Patrikas Stankevicius and Vytene Vitkauskaite. Entered with Mantas Donela this year, Stankevicius captured World Tour silver medals in 2018 and 2019 with Navickas and Audrius Knasas, respectively.
A Mikasa reception for Patrikas Stankevicius as Lithuania partner Matas Navickas follows the action.
Lithuanian’s first-ever medal winners on the World Tour were collected by the women’s team of Dumbauskaite and Povilaityte as the pair claimed bronze medals at back-to-back events in June 2017 at Chinese events in Tangshan Jiangning and Nantong, respectively. Andriukaityte and Vitkauskaite placed second in December 2018 at Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Andriukaityte and Vitkauskaite will be seeking their second World Tour medal this week. Dumbauskaite is paired with Gerda Grudzinskaite, who placed fifth at a World Tour stop in May 2019 with Karole Virbickaite at an event in the Philippines. Virbickaite is playing this week with Rugile Grudzinskaite.
