For the second year in a row, Portorož will in August be the venue of the attractive beach volleyball tournament Vzajemna Portorož Open 2017. Before the start of the tournament, the Slovenian sailors Tina Mrak and Veronika Macarol also tried out the Portorož sand; the pair returned from the July World Championship with a bronze medal. The girls already departed for Aarhus, Denmark at the weekend, where sailors will compete this week in a dress rehearsal for the Olympic classes’ World Championship, where next year in August the first Olympic berths for the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games will already be awarded. Before leaving for the regatta, Tina Mrak and Veronika Macarol held a fun training session in Portorož with the Slovenian national beach volleyball champions Tjaša Kotnik and Tjaša Jančar, and the legend Jasmin Čuturić.
The international tournament, organized by Volley Club Portorož in cooperation with the Slovenian Volleyball Federation, will take place under the auspices of the Central European volleyball federation MEVZA. On three courts on the central Portorož beach, 16 pairs in the women’s competition and 16 pairs in the men’s competition will compete in the main draw. The competition begins on Thursday, 17 August, and the finals will take place on Saturday, 19 August. The best Slovenian pairs, Tjaša Jančar and Tjaša Kotnik, and Nejc Zemljak and Jan Pokeršnik, have already announced their participation in the tournament.