Havana, July 30 (RHC)-- In volleyball, Cuba will have a difficult road to qualify for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games in the pre-Olympic tournament, scheduled from September 30 to October 8 in Brazil, Japan and China.

In the draw for the tournament, three groups were defined, with eight teams each, and the Cubans are in group A along with seven other teams, the host Brazil, Italy, Iran, Ukraine, Germany, Czech Republic and Qatar.

Nicolás Vives' disciples are twelfth in the world ranking (RM), while the locals are fourth, the Italians, second, the Iranians, tenth, the Ukrainians, sixteenth, the Germans, seventeenth, the Czechs, twenty-second, and the Qataris, twenty-fifth.

According to the rules, the top two in each group -six- will automatically qualify, and everything seems to indicate that it will not be easy for Vives' team to meet this first requirement.

 France has already secured its place as host nation, and the other slots will be assigned at the end of the pre-Olympic, to the top five teams by RM at the end of the preliminary phase of the 2024 Nations League, which will complete the 12 teams that will compete in the Parisian event.

But if the fight for the two tickets in segment A will be complicated, those in segments B and C are not far behind due to the quality of their members.  

B is made up of the host Japan, number seven in the RM, the United States (6), Slovenia (9), Serbia (11), Turkey (14), Tunisia (19), Egypt (20) and Finland (24), while C is made up of the local China (26), Poland (1), Argentina (8), the Netherlands (13), Canada (15), Belgium (21) and Bulgaria (23).

Cuba has secured its participation in the 2024 League, after finishing 13th -out of 16 teams- in the group stage -2-, with eight points, three wins and nine losses, a result that prevented it from advancing to the final round.

The United States topped the preliminary stage, ahead of Japan, Poland, Italy, Argentina, Brazil, Slovenia, France, Serbia, Netherlands, Germany, Canada, Cuba, Iran, Bulgaria and China.

First place went to the Poles, followed by the Americans, Japanese and Italians.