Beach handball’s elite hit the sand in Sicily

32 men’s and women’s teams from 17 countries have arrived in Catania, Sicily for the largest edition in the history of the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup.

Since 2014, the EHF Beach Handball Champions Cup gathers Europe's national beach handball champions and also marks the close to the European beach handball season. 16 men's and 16 women's teams have made their way to the Italian island.

In the men’s event, defending and three-time champions Ekaterinodar open their campaign against Swiss side BHC 1898 Bern in Group A.

Also in the Russian side’s group is Swedish champions Göteborg BHC and notable newcomers from Malta, Melita Falcons.

Last year’s beaten finalists and 2016 champions Club BM Playa Ciudad de Malaga are in Group B alongside EBT Masters finalists Detono Zagreb.

Last year’s MVP Norbert Gyene and his Hungarian side Orosházi FKSE Hír-Sat, who finished fourth, find themselves in Group D.

Reigning women’s champions CBMP Algeciras have landed in Group A. The toughest test for the Spanish side, with 2017 MVP and top scorer Maria Asuncion Batista Portero, is likely to come from Aker Topphandball, featuring a number of Norway’s EURO 2017-winning team and Zoe Van der Weel, who represented Great Britain at the 2012 Olympics.

Another Spanish side, CBMP Ciudad da Malaga, feature in Group B alongside last year’s beaten finalists Westsite Amsterdam, while 2015 champions and 2017 bronze medallists, Hungary’s Multichem-Szentendrei, are in Group C.

Matches start at 10:00 hrs local time on Thursday morning. The full schedule can be found here.

Follow live and on social media

Over the four days of the tournament, the EHF offers beach handball fans plenty of opportunities to follow the event.

All matches of Court 1 and Court 2 will be streamed live on ehfTV.

There will be TV coverage in Denmark and Norway on Viaplay, Germany on Sportdeutschland.de and Hungary, Czech Republic and Slovakia on Sport1.

This coverage will be supplemented by a number of highlight and best of-clips from the event which will also be available on YouTube as well as on the EHF Beach Handball Facebook page.

All matches can be followed with the dedicated beach handball ticker and the respective statistics are available for all men's and women's teams on the respective event pages.

Furthermore there will be continuous updates via Instagram stories on the EHF Beach Handball account.