ANKARA, January 10 /TASS/. The Russian women’s volleyball team has won the final of Europe’s qualifying tournament for the 2016 Olympics and has won the right to go to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro. The Russian women defeated their Dutch rivals 3-1 in a match that took place in Ankara, Turkey.

The Dutch women’s team will now play in the world qualifiers in Japan in May-June 2016 along with Italy, whose women’s team was third at the European qualifying tournament.

Soviet and Russian women’s volleyball teams have taken part in almost all Olympic volleyball tournaments except for the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles, USA, which the Soviet Union boycotted for political reasons. The Soviet Women’s Volleyball Team won four Olympic tournaments in 1968, 1972, 1980 and 1988. It was a silver medalist at the 1964 and 1972 Olympic Games. The Unified team (of the former Soviet republics) was second at the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona.

The victory at the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia, and the 2004 Olympic Games in Athens, Greece, were the best achievements of the Russian women’s national volleyball team. The Russian women were third at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. They showed a weaker performance at the two last Olympic Games (in 2008 in Beijing and in 2012 in London) when they dropped out in the quarterfinals.