Yorick de Groot, an alumnus of Erasmus School of Economics, has qualified for the Olympic Games in Paris. The beach volleyball player from Sliedrecht makes his debut at the largest sporting event in the world. Yorick owes his qualification to a fine example of perseverance.
Last March, together with his partner Stefan Boermans, he impressively won the Elite16 tournament in Doha, Qatar. On the way to gold, top duos from Norway and Sweden were defeated. Very recently, the Challenge tournament, the second highest level of the Beach Pro Tour, in Stare Jablonki (Poland) was concluded with a creditable third place.
Yorick, who studied ‘Fiscale economie’ (Economics of Taxation), was six years old when he started playing volleyball for Sliedrecht Sport. To fill the summer lull, he started with beach volleyball when he was 14. A year later, Yorick joined the Dutch selection. At the 2018 Youth Olympic Games in Argentina, he already won a silver medal with his partner Matthew Immers.
In an interview for the 2019 Backbone Magazine (p. 28), Yorick stated that people who perform at a high level in sports are used to discipline: ‘Perhaps this explains why so many of them manage to complete a demanding study as well.’
Beach volleyball is on the programme for the eighth time in Paris. Since the debut of beach volleyball at the Atlanta Olympic Games in 1996, the sport has become indispensable. The matches are played in an iconic setting. Champs de Mars is located right under the Eiffel Tower. Twenty-four teams per gender participate in the Olympic beach volleyball tournament. A total of 96 beach volleyball athletes will participate in the Olympic Games.
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For more information, please contact Ronald de Groot, Media and Public Relations Officer at Erasmus School of Economics: rdegroot@ese.eur.nl, +31 6 53 641 846.