The top-ranked team on the FIVB World Tour along with qualifying two pairs for the Olympic Beach Volleyball competition this August on Copacabana, will this be the year that Poland places a due atop the podium at a Polish stop on the international circuit?

When the US$800,000 Olsztyn Grand Slam opened play here Tuesday, it marked the 13th-time that the European nation has staged a FIVB World Tour stop and only once in the previous 12 events has a Polish men’s team reached the podium when Grzegorz Fijalek and Mariusz Prudel captured the silver medal in 2011 in Stare Jablonki