Gstaad, Switzerland, July 12, 2015 - A week after being crowned world champions, Alison Cerutti and Bruno Oscar Schmidt of Brazil validated their gold medal performance in The Netherlands by topping the podium here Sunday at the US$800,000 Gstaad Major, the third of three SWATCH Major Series events on the 2015 FIVB World Tour calendar.The third-seeded Brazilians joined three other men’s world championship pairs winning the gold medal in their next FIVB World Tour event together as Alison and Bruno posted a 2-1 (21-16, 13-21, 15-10) win in 44 minutes over fifth-seeded Aleksandrs Samoilovs and Janis Smedins of Latvia to share the $57,000 first-place prize.The Latvians, who were playing in their first international event together since the end of May due to right knee surgery for Smedins, split $43,000 for second-place. Samoilovs and Smedins, the top team on the FIVB World Tour ranking list the past two seasons, were playing in their first SWATCH Major Series event this season after missing the Croatian (Porec) and Norwegian (Stavanger) stops last month.The last world championship men’s team to capture an international start a week after winning the prestigious event were Germans Julius Brink and Jonas Reckermann in 2009. The London 2012 Olympic Games gold medal winners, Brink and Reckermann netted the world championship title in Stavanger and validated it the next week in the Russian Grand Slam in Moscow.Legendary Brazilian Emanuel Rego accomplished the feat twice with two different partners in 1999 and 2004. The first validation was with Jose Loiola as the pair won the world title in France (Marseille) and topped the podium the next week in Austria (Klagenfurt). In 2003 when the world championships were the season’s finale event in Rio de Janeiro, Emanuel and Ricardo netted the gold medal and then validated it in the 2004 season-opening event in Salvador, Brazil.To set up Sunday’s gold medal match, the fifth-seeded Samoilovs and Smedins scored a 2-1 (19-21, 21-18, 15-12) win in 52 minutes over seventh-seeded Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen of The Netherlands in the first “final four” match. Third-seeded Alison and Bruno eliminated 29th-seeded qualifiers Adrian Carambula and Alex Ranghieri from gold medal contention by posting a 2-0 (21-13, 21-12) semi-final win in 34 minutes over the Italians.Alison and Bruno, who defeated Dutchmen Reinder Nummerdor and Christiaan Varenhorst in three sets last Sunday in The Hague for the world championship gold medal, won their third match against the Latvians in five meetings on the FIVB World Tour. Sunday’s meeting between the two teams will be the first this season as the pairs split their four matches last season with Samoilovs and Smedins winning the last meeting in the Brazilian Grand Slam in São Paulo last September.With Sunday’s final match concluding the 322nd men’s FIVB World Tour event since the start of internationally-sanctioned events in 1987, Brazil and Latvia were meeting for the fourth-time for a gold medal. Brazil leads the head-to-head 3-1. Samoilovs and Smedins have played in all three title matches against Brazil, including a two-set gold medal win over Evandro Gonçalves and Emanuel Rego in the 2013 Russian Grand Slam in Moscow.The Alison and Bruno win over the Latvians presented Brazil with its 48th “gender” gold medal sweep at the same event on the FIVB World Tour. Talita Antunes and Larissa Franca topped the women’s podium Saturday by defeating Fernanda Alves and Taiana Lima 2-0 (21-13, 21-17) in the 32-minute All-Brazilian gold medal match.In the 52-minute bronze medal match, Brouwer and Meeuwsen split $32,000 by defeating Carambula and Ranghieri 2-1 (18-21, 21-16, 15-10). It was the second SWATCH Major Series meeting between the two teams with the Dutch winning the Porec Major semi-final match in Croatia. Carambula and Ranghieri split $24,000 for placing fourth.The FIVB World Tour takes a week off before resuming in the inaugural Yokohama Grand Slam July 21-26. It will mark the first-time that both men and women have competed together in Japan in a FIVB World Tour event. Seven FIVB men’s only events were held in Japan from 1989-1995, including a 1991 on stop in Yokohama. A total of 14 women’s only events were held in Osaka from 1994-2005 and in 2008 and 2009.