Haikou, China, December 21, 2009 – The 2009 Asian Beach Volleyball Championship will kick off on the Holiday Beach at Haikou on December 23 in China's resort island province of Hainan with the participation of 22 men's teams and 21 women's pairs.

The athletes of 15 countries and regions are from Chinese Hong Kong, Chinese Taipei, India, Indonesia, Iran, Japan, Kazakhstan, Malaysia, Oman, the Philippines, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Vietnam and hosts China.

All competing teams have arrived in Haikou, with the Japanese being the first, who made the trip here on December 17 to tune up for the weather as well as the sands of Olympic standard, which were transported from Sanya, another seaside resort city on the southern end of the island. Among the top favorites are women's Olympic bronze winners Xue Chen and Zhang Xi of China, while athletes from Japan, Kazakhstan and Thailand are tipped to stage their strong challenges to the hosts during the four-day competition, the event's technical officer Cao Yu said.

This is the first time for China to host the Asian beach volleyball championship after the Asian Volleyball Confederation (AVC) awarded the annual event to Haikou for the following five years."Asian beach volleyball, like those in the world, is enjoying impressive growth in many AVC members, especially Chinese women players who won excellent results in major international competitions," said AVC president Dr. Saleh Bin Nasser in his message to the organizing committee. "However, beach volleyball in Asia is not as popular as expected and the progress is not fast enough," he said, "There is still a big gap between Asian volleyball and the world." "FIVB has taken several measures to help continental federations to develop beach volleyball recently, and to hold the 2009 Asian beach volleyball championship is one of AVC actions to seize the good chances offered by FIVB to further promote Asian beach volleyball," said the president. Chinese Volleyball Association vice president Xu Li said in his message that "the great success of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games resulted in the fast promotion of the sport of beach volleyball in Asia." "Hainan province is the most popular place for beach volleyball in China as it is the training base for the Chinese national team which won two medals in the Beijing Olympic Games." "I wish not only a sensational performance from the Chinese national teams but also a great success to the event under the perfect preparation by the organizing committee," said Xu.

The 2009 championship running till December 26, is composed of a preliminary round and a single elimination phase. Both men's and women's events will be divided into eight groups apiece for a round-robin format, with the top two of each group entering the round of 16.The round of 16 will be played in a single elimination format to qualify eight winning teams for the quarterfinals, with the winners to be decided on December 26. Eight seeded teams are based on the calculation of their results both within the FIVB World Tour, Asian Tour and regional events, while two teams from the same AVC member will not participate in the same pool.The organizers are offering a total prize money of 100,000 US dollars, to be split equally for the men and women athletes, with the winners pocketing 10,000 dollars each, and the last-placed teams taking home 300 US dollars.