Press release

London, Great Britain, August 2, 2012 – Nothing but good men’s stats as this year’s beach volleyball competition of the London 2012 Olympic Games through Wednesday’s Day 5.

All the crowd-pleasing, heart-pounding action is being held in the purpose-built, sold-out 15,000-seat stadium on the grounds of the iconic Horse Guards Parade as the majestic venue includes a portion of adjacent St. James Park in historic central London.

As the final day of men’s pool play concludes Thursday, impressive team and individual official statistics reflect the depth and quality of the field here at Horse Guards Parade.

With eight teams in each gender being eliminated Thursday, A total of 16 teams in each gender will advance to the elimination rounds which begin with the Round of 16 split into two days on Friday and Saturday.

Again, through Wednesday’s Day 5 of this Olympic Games competition, of the 30 men’s matches held, 20 were two-set matches with six seed breakthroughs with an average time of 39 minutes per match.  The 10 matches that went to the tie-break saw four seed breakthroughs with an average time of 56 minutes.

In the team stats catagory, China’s 10th-seeded Penggen Wu/Linyin Xu have the most total aces with 9 following by a tied for second with Canada’s 19th-seeded Josh Binstock/Martin Reader and Germany’s third-seeded Julius Brink/Jonas Reckermann each with eight per team.

In total blocks by a team, Poland’s ninth-seeded Grzegorz Fijalek/Mariusz Prudel lead with 16 while tied for second are USA’s second-seeded Phil Dalhausser/Todd Rogers and Germany’s Brink/Reckermann each with 14 per team.

In team attack success percentage, leading is Brazil’s seventh-seeded Pedro Cunha/Ricardo Santos with 63% while second is Netherlands’ fifth-seeded Reindeer Nummerdor/Richard Schuil with 61% and tied for third place are Germany’s Brink/Reckermann and Latvia’s 16th-seeded Aleksandrs Samoilovs/Ruslans Sorokins with 58% each.

In team digs, Switzerland’s 15th-seeded Sascha Heyer/Sebastian Chevallier lead wtih 68, followed by China’s Wu/Xu with 59 and Russia’s 22nd-seeded Sergey Prokopyev/Konstantin Semenov with 58 total.

Individually, Russia’s young team of Prokopyev/Semenov lead three of six catagories. Prokopyev is leading [pomts wotj 75 total and digs with 53 while Semenov  is first in attack success percentage with 71%.

Leading the other three individual catagories and there totals are Canada’s Reader and Brazil’s Ricardo Santos (tied with aces-7 each), Latvia’s Ruslans Sorokins (top serve speed, 99 km/h), and Poland’s Prudel (blocks-16).  Ricardo is also third in attack success percentage with 65%.

Germany’s Reckermann and China’s Wu are tied for second in points with 70 each, Germany’s Reckermann is also second in blocks with 14 with USA’s Dalhausser with 13.  China’s Wu is also third in digs with 43.

Second in attack success percentage at 66% is Brazil’s Alison Cerutti, while second in digs is Switzerland’s Sebastian Chevallier with 52.

In some of the miscellaneous numbers, the longest men’s match through Wednesday was one hour, nine minutes whenSwitzerland’s Chevallier/Sascha Heyer defeated Russia’s Prokopyev/Semenov, 28-26, 18-21 and 15-13. The shortest men’s match length has been 33 minutes when USA’s Jake Gibb/Sean Rosenthal defeated South Africa’s Freedom Chiya/Grant Goldschmidt, 21-10, 21-11.

The highest scoring men’s set so far was 29-27 in the first set during Prokopyev/Semenov’s win over China’s Wu/Xu.

Men’s beach volleyball continues daily at Horse Guards Parade in the London 2012 Olympic Games until the medal matches on Thursday, August 9.