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BEACH VOLLEYBALL WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP 2005, BERLIN, GERMANY

added on July 3rd, 2006

by Wolfgang Marx, Germany

 

The 5th Beach Volleyball World Championships took place from June 21st to 26th, 2005, at the “Berliner Schlossplatz” in Berlin, Germany.
48 women’s teams as well as 48 men’s teams started the competition on more than 3.000 tons of sand brought from “Hohen Neudorf” from the German region called “Mark”, which covered most of the 11.000 m2 area dedicated to this event. And it was a very special kind of sand: According to the rules each sand corn must be between 0.3 and 0.7 mm big, and the whole amount had to be washed twice before it could be used. In total there were eight beach courts: one centre court with a spectator capacity of 8.000, five side courts and two training courts.

The local Volleyball Federation of Berlin, taking advantage of this event, used its popularity to promote this popular sport and to advertise the World Championships. The Berlin Youth Championships in Beach Volleyball were organized in three age – categories, different school championships took place and the universities of Berlin competed in a Quattro – Mix (two women, two men on each team) for their championship crown.

The buildings next to the courts were also quite famous: there is the “Palace of the German Democratic Republic” (soon to be demolished) as well as the building of the former state council of the GDR, which served from 1999 to 2002 as office of the federal chancellor and which became a private High School for Economics in 2005, with its famous “Schlossbalkon” (balcony) where Karl Liebknecht declared the first social republic in 1918. Right under this balcony the “sand diggers” were in action.
 

Cachet cover of the OSPC Berlin with commemorative cancel from the German Post, showing the former building of the state council of the GDR.


Of course, this world championship was a challenge for the OSPC Berlin, the Olympics and Sports Collectors Club, in its 15th year of existence. The aim was to document the event in a worthy philatelic way. Thanks to “postman” Stephan Hinze it was possible to convince the German Post to produce a commemorative cancel, depicting the façade of the building of the former state council of the GDR, especially its balcony.
 

Cachet cover produced by IMOS, the German Olympics and Sports collectors organization.

The date of the cancel – July 20th, 2005 – was the day of the technical meeting (and draw of the ladies matches) on the night prior to the start of the event. The cachet of the cover, produced by OSPC, shows the official logo of the championships, together with the name of the official sponsor (“smart”). The total price money of one million US$ could only be raised through different sponsoring activities. This was also the reason why the official logo was not shown on the commemorative cancel of the German Post, since commercial advertising is not allowed.

The private post company PIN AG also took advantage of this sport event. In 2004, the OSPC club set up a concept together with the PIN AG company to produce stamps for five different sport events during 2005 (to honour sports in Berlin and to commemorate the 15th anniversary of the PSOC Berlin): 94th – Six – Day – Bike – Racing in January, International German Gymnastic Festival in May, 5th Beach – Volleyball World Championships in June, 64th International Stadium Festival (ISTAF) and 32nd Berlin Marathon (both in September). For different reasons (mainly because of lack of agreement of the organizers of the different events) in the end only the Beach Volleyball Championships were commemorated.
The PIN AG company produced a single stamp (covering the postage of a standard letter, value €uro 0.48) as well as a block with four stamps, repeating the topic of the single stamp.
 

First Day Cover of the PIN AG company with first day cancel dated April 11th, 2005

Block with four different stamps, €uro 0.48 each (standard letter rate), issued by the PIN AG company


Without any problems the PIN AG company could show the logos of the sponsoring companies of the event (“swatch” and “smart”), since the rules of the German Post do not apply in this case.

In the end the Beach Volleyball World Championships were a big success. The centre court was sold out daily. The expert audience was delighted by the performances of the world-best teams from the USA, from Brazil, China, Cuba etc. The German men’s teams did not bad, either.
 

RESULTS:
In the ladies competition, the Brazilian team França-Felisberta Silva were defeated by the US-team Walsh-May-Treanor 0-2 (17-21, 17-21). Third place went to the Chinese Tian Jia-Wang Fei after beating Fernandez Grasset-Larrea Peraza from Cuba 2-0 (21-13, 21-17).
In the men’s event, the title went to Brazil after the victory of Marcio Araujo-de Jesus Magalhães against the Swiss team Heyer-Laciga P. 2-0 (22-20, 21-12). Third place was won by Brink-Schneider K. in an all German match against Polte-Schoen 2-1 (16-21, 21-17, 15-10).
 
     
 


A player’s strike had overshadowed the event shortly before its start. Around midnight of June 20th, the players threatened to boycott the event, because they were forced to sign a four-year contract with the FIVB, telling them exactly how many times they had to participate in the different world tournaments etc. The FIVB has commercialized the international Beach Volleyball scene completely, the main aim of this sport to produce financial income for the international federation. Another point of this contract was the prohibition to form any kind of players union, because Mr. Acosta, the arbitrary president of the FIVB, was afraid to lose power if the players would unite. He himself charged commissions of various millions of US$ from sponsoring companies. When the ethics commission of the FIVB dealt with these occurrences, Mr. Acosta resigned from his post, officially for reason of age.
Fortunately, a compromise could be found in Berlin so that the championships could go ahead.
 

Postal stationery entire, isse by the PIN AG company, showing the €uro - 0.48 - stamp as indicium.

Full sheet of the single stamp issed by the PIN AG company.
Three postally used covers with the PIN AG stamp (the first one has a blue cancel, the second one a red and the third one a black cancel !)
It is interesting that this cover was introduced into the "offical" poststream through the Dutch TPG - Post company, by sing the services of SPRING, a joint venture of TPG Holland, Royal Mail GB and Singapore Post.
You can see the SPRING postbox number 75833 in 1118 ZZ Schiphol Triport (probably the hub at the Amsterdam airport Schiphol) .

This example shows a letter sent with stamps from PIN AG from Germany to Austria. This time it was transported via Brussels. It cannot be said if it was mailed through SPRING (as the former example). There are similar international mail routes known used by PIN AG (Amsterdam, Le Bourget and Malta).

 

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