Alison and Bruno break through tough times to keep golden dream alive

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 16, 2016 – Brazil’s Alison Cerutti and Bruno Schmidt reached the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games beach volleyball men’s gold medal match by defeating the Netherlands Alexander Brouwer and Robert Meeuwsen 2-1 (21–17, 21–23, 16–14) in the semifinals at the Copacabana Beach Venue on Tuesday.

They will take on either Italy’ Daniele Lupo and Paolo Nicolai or Russia’s Konstantin Semenov and Viacheslav Krasilnikov who meet later on Tuesday. The gold medal match takes place on Thursday.

Here’s what they said after the match….

Alison Cerutti, Brazil
“We have always trusted each other very much, that's why we've been with each other for a long time. We have to be humble, listen to each other's opinions and accept what the other is saying.

“We have to control ourselves because we always want more and more. The best thing is how we believe in our ability to play volleyball.

“It's not easy to start a game with the obligation to win another, but we reverse this pressure in a fun way, and that's why we're in the Olympic final.”

“I was so nervous. We had a chance to win 2-0, but the Dutch played amazingly at the end of the set and didn’t give up on any points. I said to Alison we needed to overcome those moments and to be mentally stronger and go up another step.

“The Dutch guys played amazingly, I’ve never seen them play so well. They have played strongly since the start of the tournament and that makes our victory even better. Now we have one more day to rest and more match. 

“We were feeling very emotional, but we had to keep those emotions in check and work through them, especially because we had chance to finish the match in the second. Then we had to play a third set and they went 3-0 ahead, so that shows how difficult it was in this game.”

“We had to fight on the edge, especially at the end of the second set that allowed us to come back and win the second set. 

“The third set we started well, but we started to make mistakes and we weren’t as clean as we would have liked and that cost us the game. 

“The serve strategy was ok, but mainly we were able to handle it pretty well, but in block defence they were able to put a lot of pressure on us.”