Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 18, 2016 – Brazil’s Alison Cerutti and Bruno Schmidt won the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games gold medal with a 2-0 (21-19, 21-17) victory over Italy’s Daniele Lupo and Paolo Nicolai at the Copacabana Beach Arena on Thursday.
Here’s what they said after the match…
Alison Cerutti, Brazil
“In 2012 I won a silver medal and this one is more precious. I needed to do my job to the best of my ability and help Bruno. I have had to work for a gold medal for four years.
“It took a lot of dreaming and a lot of desire. I believed in doing this and I found a partner that believed in this too.
“It was four years of hard work. A lot of dedication, a new team, and a lot of faith. That's what brought us here today.
“It was amazing because we are so close to our friends and family, it's wonderful. The Brazilian people deserve this. It is incredible. It is amazing because here it is the Maracana of beach volleyball.”
Bruno Schmidt, Brazil
“It will take a few weeks to understand what we did in front of our home fans in the best place to play this sport. We’ve had so much pressure to handle in these two weeks. I wasn’t sleeping well and this is the most difficult thing I’ve ever done in my life, but I believed in what I did.
“There is something magical behind these Games. It was something I wanted so badly my whole career. Today is my dream that has come true in front of Brazilians and my whole family. It is something magical that I will have my whole life.
“Since the day that we started, three times I have almost stopped playing, almost said, 'I'm done, I'm too tired to try hard'. Since we built this team, I knew we would have other chances to follow our dreams and Alison was a monster today.”
Daniele Lupo, Italy
“We are still young, we are very happy because we have worked so hard to achieve this and we are going to celebrate anyway.
“It was amazing to play an Olympic final. We knew that the crowd was against us but I'm happy to be here after a very difficult year. We just hope that from now on beach volleyball will grow even more in Italy.
“We are happy with our medal even though we are a bit disappointed we lost. But we will have to put this loss behind us and go and celebrate at home.
“We now want to go to Tokyo (2020) and win another medal.”
Paolo Nicolai, Italy
“When you lose something it is a little bit difficult, but we have a silver medal so we are a so proud of our team.
“They are the best for sure, they won the World Championships and now won the Olympic medal. They are the best team. Today we tried to put everything in the court, but they played better and they are the champions.
“We gave it our all. Our opponents deserved the win, also because they have dominated the field over the past three years. We played until the end, there was a lot of tension, it was certainly not our best match.
"When we had the chance to overcome them you have to take it. But we tried our best.
“I liked playing there, but today they (the crowd) were for the Brazilians. We knew that and played with our own fire and we enjoyed the game.”