Rome, Italy, June 19, 2011 – FIVB President Jizhong Wei has called the FIVB Swatch World Championships Rome 2011 powered by smart one of the most competitive ever, citing an improvement in the level of play for both men and women.

Speaking to the media on Sunday, President Wei highlighted the fact that experience is the only thing separating the top teams.

“I think for these World Championships, the technical level is high, because nearly all the best beach volleyball players in the world came to participate in these World Championships,” President Wei stated. “I think most of the players have improved. Some players due to their age, their performance is going down a little bit, but that is due to age.

“Beach volleyball sometimes is very difficult to predict who will win. There were teams who weren’t in Beijing and they are here, or who have played poorly in other competitions and they do well. It means that technically players are nearly at the same level; the difference is experience.”

President Wei wants federations to encourage greater participation. 

“In the future, we have to encourage the national federations to organise their national league or national championship of beach volleyball,” he suggested. “Then we may have more and more new players.

“I think this is good because this will involve more national federations paying attention to beach volleyball. We will give some legitimate advantage to the organising federations, allowing their players to have a little more opportunity to move into the next bracket of competitions.”