Qualification is due to begin tomorrow in Russia’s capital, which is staging an FIVB Beach World Tour event for the 10^th-straight season and 12^th-time in all since the start of the sanctioned competition in 1987.

Before qualification starts, five quota matches were played today to determine the final spots teams from Brazil and the United States.

In the men's draw, Pedro Solberg and Guto defeated fellow Brazilians George and Vitor Felipe 21-16, 16-21, 15-11 while William Allen and Stafford Slick won 21-19, 21-18 against Sean Rosenthal and Trevor Crabb to claim the last spot for the US.

Maria Antonelli and Carolina Salgado will head into the women's qualification round after winning two matches against other pairings from Brazil and they will be joined by US duo Emily Day and Brittany Hochevar defeated Lane Carico and Caitlin Ledoux 21-16, 21-15.

Eight men’s and eight women’s pairings will advance from qualification to the main draw, which is scheduled to begin on Thursday (June 1).

Russia have won eight gold medals previously on the tour, with one coming in February as Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Nikita Liamin beat Poland’s Piotr Kantor and Bartosz Losiak 18-21, 21-19, 15-8 in the final on Iran’s Kish Island.

They have already qualified for the main draw in Moscow, where action will be held at the Vodny Stadium Beach Sports Centre, along with fellow Russian duos Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Artem Yarzutkin and Maxim Sivolap and Igor Velichko.

Stoyanovskiy and Yarzutkin, the gold medallists at the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games, finished third on Kish Island with a 13-21, 21-17, 15-7 victory over Germany’s Lorenz Schumann and Julius Thole.

Sivolap and Velichko reached the quarter-finals where they were beaten 24-26, 21-17, 10-15 by Krasilnikov and Liamin.

Other Russian duos vying for glory are Ruslan Bykanov and Yaroslav Koshkarev and compatriots Aleksandr Kramarenko and Taras Myskiv.

The elimination rounds will be played on Friday (June 2) and Saturday (June 3) before the medal matches take centre stage on Sunday (June 4).

The event is the sixth double-gender stop on the 2017 FIVB Beach World Tour calendar and eighth overall this season.

Also competing this week are Ekaterina Birlova and Evgeniya Ukolova, who netted FIVB Beach World Tour gold for Russia in Austrian city Klagenfurt in 2012 and on home sand in Anapa in 2013.

They will be alongside different partners, however, with Birlova playing with Nadezda Makroguzova and Ukolova teaming up with Anastasia Barsuk.