Berlin, Germany, August 3, 2013 – World Championships silver medallist Ricardo Santos returns to action at the Berlin smart Grand Slam after he was forced to miss the previous FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour Grand Slam in Long Beach, USA.
The 38-year-old was forced to pull out of the event with an abdominal injury, but after going through rehabilitation at the national training centre he is free of pain and ready to reunite with the man with whom he won silver at the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships, Alvaro Filho.
“It is only the second time that I have suffered this type of injury, the previous was in 2009 with my triceps and I was out for a month,” he said. “This time it has been only 10 days and while the rest of the team were in the United States I was training in Joao Pessoa.
“At first I wasn’t jumping though as I was worried about re-aggravating the injury as I didn’t want to miss another stop. Eventually I did my first workout with jumping and I felt nothing, which I’m very glad about.”
In Ricardo’s absence Alvaro played alongside Edson Filipe and reached the second elimination round. In their last tournament together, the Gstaad Grand Slam, Ricardo and Alvaro won their first World Tour gold medals to add to the silvers they won at the World Championships and the bronze medals from the Shanghai Grand Slam.
Currently they are fourth in the World Tour standings between USA pairs Jacob Gibb and Casey Patterson and Phil Dalhausser and Sean Rosenthal, but almost 700 points behind leaders and fellow Brazilians Pedro Salgado and Bruno Oscar Schmidt.
"We're growing as a team and we've had two great results in a row before we were stopped abruptly,” Ricardo said. “In Berlin we will try and recover the points we missed out on at Long Beach.