Patience the key as Ludwig and Walkenhorst eye one more step

Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 16, 2016 – Germany’s Laura Ludwig and Kira Walkenhorst reached the Rio de Janeiro 2016 Olympic Games beach volleyball women’s gold medal match by defeating Brazil’s Larissa Franca and Talita Antunes 2-1 (21-18, 21-12) in the semifinals at the Copacabana Beach Venue on Tuesday.

They will take on either Brazil’s Agatha Bednarczuk and Barbara Seixas or USA’s Kerri Walsh Jennings and April Ross, who meet later on Tuesday.

The gold medal match takes place on Wednesday.

Here’s what they said after the match….

“I definitely was the nervous I’ve been before a match because it was the semi in front of the crowd and that is the third player. We talked about it before and wanted to keep focus on us.

“Winning the first set was really important to have patience and have lots of patience. We knew we could get at them with our service block defence. We made some mistakes, which is fine but the important thing was to stick together as a team and that was the most important thing. 

“The four best seeded teams are in the semis here, so we knew that both matches wold be really hard and tough, but we love tough matches and love going out there and going on that court and can’t wait to play again.

“A lot of things worked again. We knew we could beat them. It was really important that we’d beaten them before so we believed in it and it definitely made us stronger. 

“I need some time to realise what we’ve done here, especially over the last four years. There’s been tough times and now we’re in the final of the Olympics. I can’t believe it.”

“Of course I’m not so happy. They are a good team and played so well today and were better than us, so congratulations to them. 

“We wanted to win for the people who come. I’m so proud of the Brazilian people and we don’t go to the final, but we have one more match for the bronze medal. I don’t know who we will have, but it will be a big fight.”