By Eurohoops team/ info@eurohoops.net
Serbia is the big winner in the race for hosting the pre-Olympic qualifying tournament since the country was awarded both a men and a women’s tournament. It has also to be noted that three out of the four pre-Olympic tournaments will be held in Europe, while Greece had practically withdrawn its candidacy due to financial reasons.
Per FIBA: The National Federations of Canada (Victoria), Croatia (Split), Lithuania (Kaunas) and Serbia (Belgrade) have been awarded the hosting rights of the four FIBA Men’s Olympic Qualifying Tournaments, from June 23 to 28, 2020.
The National Federations of Belgium (Ostend), China (Foshan), France (Bourges) and Serbia (Belgrade) have been awarded the hosting rights of the four FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournaments, from February 6 to 9, 2020.
Hosting rights for the FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournaments have been awarded to China under the condition that they qualify from the FIBA Women’s Olympic Pre-Qualifying Tournament, currently being played in New Zealand. If China does not qualify, the Executive Committee will evaluate other candidatures.
The road to Tokyo for the men will see 24 teams compete in four qualifying tournaments of six teams each, with seven teams qualified directly from the recent FIBA Basketball World Cup 2019.
For the women, 16 teams will be split into four groups, who will then battle for spots at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. The list of teams participating in the FIBA Women’s Olympic Qualifying Tournaments will be confirmed at the conclusion of the FIBA Women’s Olympic Pre-Qualifying Tournaments on Sunday evening.
The official Draw Ceremony for both the men’s and women’s FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments will take place at the Patrick Baumann House of Basketball, FIBA headquarters, on November 27, 2019. The draw will divide qualified teams from the five FIBA regions into geographically balanced groups and the ceremony will be live-streamed via the FIBA YouTube channel and also the FIBA Facebook account.