The Iranian Volleyball Federation staged a snow volleyball tournament for the first time at the Dizin resort in the Alborz mountain near Tehran. The competition is held on 12 – 13 February in association with Austrian agency Chaka2, which is the agency responsible for creating and organizing parts of the 2017 CEV Snow Volleyball European Tour.
7 European and 3 Iranian teams competed. The teams playing are from Austria, Czech Republic, Iran, Italy, Germany, Poland, Russia & Slovenia. Both courts were allocated on 2.650m above sea-level and marked therefore a new world record for a professionally organized snow volleyball event on such an altitude.
With the first professionally organized Snow Volleyball event in Asia, it marked a historic step for the global development of the game. Snow volleyball first came to prominence in the town of Wagrain, Austria, in 2008.
Yury Bogatov and Ruslan Dayanov of Russia took the top honours at the historic Snow Volleyball tournament. High-ranking Iranian officials attended the final stages of the tournament.
“We are very excited about the gold medal and the great tournament we played the last couple of days,” Bogatov and Dayanov said. “Snow Volleyball is definitely a great game with a bright future ahead,” they continued. They will now move straight to a stop of the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour set to take place later this week on Kish Island, Iran.
The 2017 CEV Snow Volleyball European Tour will be starting this coming weekend with the first of seven events on schedule taking place in Erciyes, Turkey and six more to follow in the Czech Republic, Turkey, Switzerland, Slovenia, Liechtenstein and Italy.
