Norway's Christian Sørum and Anders Mol, who won gold at Tokyo 2020, are looking for their fourth successive European title at EuroBeachVolley 2021 ©Getty Images

Coming off their Olympic triumph, Norway pair Christian Sørum and Anders Mol will seek to defend their continental title at the EuroBeachVolley tournament 15 in Vienna in Austria, which begins tomorrow and is set to conclude on Sunday (August 15).

Christian Sørum and Anders Mol have dominated European beach volleyball in since 2018, totalling three successive European titles, a third-place finish in the 2019 World Championships and 10 World Tour victories.

Sørum and Mol continued their excellent form at Tokyo 2020, beating a "neutral" Russian team in the final 21-17, 21-18.

Norway were the top seed entering the Olympics and will be favourites to continue its success at this year's edition of the European Volleyball Confederation's flagship beach event. 

Sørum and Mol have been placed in Group A alongside French pair Quincy Aye and Arnaud Gauthier-Rat, Adrian Heidrich and Mirco Gerson of Switzerland, and Austria's Robin Seidl and Philipp Waller.

Another team tipped to content will be Viacheslav Krasilnikov and Oleg Stoyanovskiy of Russia.

The duo are the 2019 world champions and lost to Sørum and Mol in the Olympic final last Saturday (August 7).

They also lost to Norway in last year's EuroBeachVolley competition and are ranked second in the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) world rankings.

Anouk Vergé-Dépré of Switzerland won bronze at Tokyo 2020 and will compete with Esmée Böbner at EuroBeachVolley 2021 ©Getty Images
Anouk Vergé-Dépré of Switzerland won bronze at Tokyo 2020 and will compete with Esmée Böbner at EuroBeachVolley 2021 ©Getty Images

Group B features Edgars Točs and Mārtiņš Pļaviņš.

The Latvian duo lost in the Olympic bronze-medal match to Qatar and will be another team eager to reach the final stages.

Also in Group B is the world number four pair Ondřej Perušič and David Schweiner from the Czech Republic.

The men's competition gets underway on Thursday (August 12).

The women's competition gets underway the day before, with Anouk Vergé-Dépré of Switzerland looking to build upon her bronze medal from Tokyo 2020, this time competing alongside Esmée Böbner.

Russia's Svetlana Kholomina has the highest total of individual FIVB ranking points entering the tournament. 

She will partner Ksenia Dabizha.

The highest-ranked pair in the competition are Switzerland's Nina Betschart and Tanja Hüberli, with Anastasija Kravčenoka and Tīna Graudiņa of Latvia the only other pair to total more than 2,000 combined ranking points.

The women's competition gets underway tomorrow as Karla Borger and Julia Sude of Germany face Daniela Álvarez Mendoza and Angela Lobato Herrero of Spain, and Barbora Hermannová and Markéta Sluková of the Czech Republic play Norway's Emilie Olimstad and Ingrid Lunde.