KEY POINTS:
Beach volleyballers Kirk Pitman and Jason Lochhead will start their final quest for qualification to the 2008 Beijing Olympics in Adelaide later this month.
The pair is one of the six New Zealand teams who'll play at Glenelg Beach when the international starts on March 24-30.
Pitman and Lochhead will start the tour with an Olympic ranking of 27. They need to move into the top 24 within the first 12 events to qualify for Beijing.
Former netballer Anna Scarlett and Susan Blundell will start their new careers as professional players, with a long-term goal of qualifying for the London Olympics in 2012. Emma Preston and Micah Lindsay-Brown, the No 3 New Zealand team on the 2008 national tour, will also be making their debut on the world tour.
Russell Watson and Greg Lindsay-Brown (NZ No 2 team), Brendon Heath and Mike Peters and Charles Leota and Damon Haenga are the other teams who will be in Adelaide.
The Adelaide Australia Open is a new event on the world tour.
Nine of the 10 top ranked men's teams on the world tour, includingNo 1 Emanuel Rego and Ricardo Santos (Brazil) and world champions Phil Dalhausser and Todd Rogers (US), will be in Adelaide.
Eight of the women's top 10 will be there - world No 1 Larissa Franca and Juliana Felisberta Da Silva (Brazil), No 2 Tian Jia and Wang Fei (China) and No 3 Chen Xue and Zhang Xi (China) - included.
- NZPA
