Crowd roar Alison and Bruno one step nearer gold

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 15, 2016 – Brazil’s Alison Cerutti and Bruno Schmidt reached the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games men’s semifinals with a 2-1 (21-12, 14-21, 15-9) win over USA’s Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena at Copacabana Beach Arena on Monday.

Here’s what they said after the match….

“Alison kept the crowd with us. I also have a good relationship with them and was celebrating and getting energy from them at excellent points. Today it was a good battle. 

“It was very tough because when we stared our warm-up there was no wind, but when we started the match there was this crazy wind. We knew that we had to create something new and be able handle it as soon as possible. 

“They had an excellent second set, but we had a good side-out. 

“We’ll still take it match by match. We’ve finished this one and now we’ll focus on the next one.” 

“I felt we didn’t play great in the first set and I didn’t play great. Second we picked it up and third they just did a really good with the wind. 

“Just when we were done with the warm-ups ended this wind came out of nowhere. It was dead calm and then it started blowing. They handled the wind better than us. 

“it was really tough conditions today and I’m really impressed with how they did. In California the wind picks up around 10 o’clock every day and that is when we train. This was extreme though. 

“We started playing together a year ago and no-one gave us the chance to qualify. We were playing with the house’s money because we weren’t supposed to be here. I’ve enjoyed the journey and enjoyed the week and a half. I couldn’t have done it without him and wouldn’t have wanted to do it with anyone else.”