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When the Asian Senior Beach Volleyball Championships get underway on June 23 at the Pingtan in China, Qatar’s Cherif Younousse and Ahmed Tijan, three-time champions, will be looking to defend their championship.
The Tokyo Olympic bronze medalists will compete on the picturesque island’s sands as the favourites to win the prestigious title, but they will face competition from some of the best teams in the world, including the Australian duo of Thomas Hodges and Zachery Schubert, who are currently ranked No. 19, and the double Commonwealth Games gold medalists and former Asian champions Chris McHugh/Paul Burnett.
It will be exciting to see the competition between Cherif/Ahmed and McHugh/Burnett, two Asian heavyweights who will face off for the third time in the Championships’ history.
Cherif and Ahmed had lost to the eventual victors, an Australian pair, in the 2021 tournament’s semi-final match, which was played in Phuket, Thailand, before overcoming McHugh and Burnett in the final match last year in Bandar, Iran.
The two Asian championships won by the Qatari pair in 2018 and 2019 were held in Thailand and China, respectively.
The McHugh, on the other hand, has won the Asian championship five times, in 2012, 2014, 2016, 2020, and 2022, and has done it with three different partners: Isaac Kappa, Damien Schumann, and Burnett.
The former World No. 1 Qatari duo, who are presently ranked sixth in the FIVB rankings, will be competing in their third tournament of the year at the Asian Championships.
Following a lacklustre start to the season at the Doha round of the same series, where they placed ninth, Cherif and Ahmed shone at the Beach Pro Tour Elite 16 competition in Ostrava and took second place.
In addition to the star pair, Qatar will also have another pair in the men’s tournament, which features 32 pairs in action: Ibrahim Nassim Abdullah and Zaki Mohamed Ihab.
The men’s contests were eliminated from the 2001 and 2015 tournaments, making this year’s competition the 23rd Senior Championships overall.
