(MENAFN- The Peninsula) The Peninsula
Doha: Qatar's Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan were ranked joint-second, along with Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen of the Netherlands, the latest FIVB Beach Volleyball World Men's Rankings showed yesterday.
The Qatari Olympic bronze winners and the Dutch pair have accumulated 7,220 points each.
The reigning world champions and long-time men's leaders Anders Mol and Christian Sorum of Norway are at the top of the rankings as the number one teams according to the weekly update of the charts.
Mol and Sorum, who lost the number one spot to Cherif and Ahmed during the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games in the summer of 2021, regained it in October 2022 after winning the Paris Elite16.
Currently, the beach volley Vikings have 8,450 points, an impressive 1,230 points more than their closest rivals.
Cherif and Ahmed led the World Ranking from August 2021 until May 2022, and Brower and Meeuwsen took over from them, but only for a week in early May.
Then another Dutch team, Stefan Boermans and Yorick de Groot stepped into the lead, but that also lasted only three weeks as De Groot's season was interrupted by an injury.
Andre Stein and George Wanderley of Brazil, who led the men's World Ranking from May 30 to October 3, are currently fourth on 7,060 points.
Poland's Michal Bryl and Bartosz Losiak, who won the highest number of gold medals during the inaugural Beach Pro Tour season along with Mol and Sorum (four each), stand fifth in the chart on 6,700 points.
The FIVB Beach Volleyball World Ranking is established on the FIVB Beach Volleyball ranking points earned at the eight best performance as a team in all FIVB sanctioned or homologated beach volleyball tournaments over a 365-days period.
The FIVB Olympic Ranking, on the other hand, will take into account the 12 best performances achieved by a pair in the window from January 1, 2023 (the first event that offers points is the Elite16 tournament in Doha) to June 10, 2024.
The top 17 ranked teams (per gender) will qualify for the Olympics alongside one team from the hosts (France), the 2023 World Champions and the five teams that win the Continental Olympic Tournaments.