FIBA – OQT to provide remaining Olympic participants

GENEVA (FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament) – With the last two of this summer’s ten continental zone championships – five for men and five for women – having concluded over the weekend, all the automatically qualified teams for the Olympic Basketball Tournaments are now known, while twenty-four teams booked their place in the two twelve team FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournaments (OQT).

The teams participating in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament for men are:
Angola, Dominican Republic, FYR of Macedonia, Greece, Jordan, Korea, Lithuania, New Zealand, Nigeria, Puerto Rico, Russia, Venezuela.

The teams participating in the FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament for women are:
Argentina, Canada, Croatia, Cuba, Czech Republic, France, Japan, Korea, Mali, New Zealand, Senegal, Turkey.

With the location of the two tournaments yet to be decided, the host countries will be chosen during the FIBA Central Board meeting – held 10-11 December 2011.

The FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament for men will decide the last three teams participating in the Olympics and take place 2-8 July 2012 while the women’s Tournament hands out places to the top five finishers and will be held 25 June to 1 July 2012.

The Olympic Qualifying Tournament for men will see the 12 qualified teams divided into four groups of three teams. The group stage will be played as a standard round robin, with the top two teams from each group progressing to the Quarter Finals. The winners of the four Quarter Finals progress to the Semi Final round, in which – in view of the three Olympic places up for grabs – the winners book two of the three places (no first/second place final is played), while the two losing Semi Finalists face off for the last remaining spot.

Similarly, the group stage of the Olympic Qualifying Tournament for women is also played as a round robin of four groups of three teams, with the best two in each group making the Quarter Final stage. With the top five teams earning tickets to the Olympics, all four winning Quarter Finalists qualify directly for London and play no further part, while the four losing Quarter Finalists play for the last remaining Olympic berth in a standard knockout Semi Final/Final format.

The 2008 FIBA Olympic Qualifying Tournament for men was held in Athens, Greece and saw hosts Greece and Croatia share the top two spots, while Germany finished third to book the 12th and final place in the Olympic Basketball Tournament.

In the women’s equivalent, held in Madrid Spain, Latvia, Belarus, Czech Republic and Spain all booked places as the winning Quarter Finalists, while emerged victorious among the four losing Semi Finalists to complete the line-up for the Beijing.

Formerly known as the Pre-Olympic Tournament, the Olympic Qualifying Tournament (for men) was first held in 1960 (1976 for women, coinciding with the first women’s Olympic Basketball Tournament) and played in various formats – on a world level and/or on a continental level – until 1992 when it was abandoned only to be reintroduced in its current format in 2008.

FIBA