Alison Cerutti made history in 2016 when he won gold at the Rio Olympics with Bruno Schmidt. Now in a new partnership, with André Stein, he knows that the path ahead to the 2020 Games will be rough. In the duo’s first two months together, things have not been easy. Alison talked about what will it take to overcome these barriers (Globo.com):
“We have come together with short, medium, and long term goals. The long-term goal looks like it’s close but it’s not, which is to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics. Medium-term, we have the World Tour. In the short term, the more we mature as a team, the better. André changed positions, he was a blocker, now he became a defender. It’s a totally different set-up. It may not seem like it, but it changes a lot. We do not have much time to train, but we have to adapt as quickly as possible. And how to adapt? A lot of training, in the time we have, and especially a lot of talk. The technical staff has been talking to us a lot, going over many videos of games and training so that we can evolve as soon as possible. And this evolution happens according to time. Since we do not have the suitable time, let’s work and use the time we have.
We have to use some of our experience. André is only 23 years old, but he has an incredible career already, being world champion and Brazilian champion. I have my experience at 32. We have to talk and do our best on the court so that we can come out with the victories. And that will improve with time, because after the world circuit the workload increases, dedication increases, vacations are smaller this year because next year we start qualifying for the Olympics, that is the goal of the team.”
Next week Alison and André Stein will be traveling to two stages of the World Circuit, the first in Vienna, Austria and the second in Moscow, Russia.
Leave a Reply