Olympic Games Tokyo 2020 - Beach Volleyball

Evandro: Every match at the Olympics will be a final

The Brazilian analyses his pool in Tokyo and expects tough competition from the start

Published 07:00, 13 Jul 2021

Back on the FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour for the first time since April, Evandro Goncalves and Bruno Schmidt finished fifth in last week’s 4-star tournament in Gstaad.

The Brazilians were already in the Swiss Alps when they followed the drawing of lots for the Tokyo Olympic Games, which put them in Pool E with Poland’s Grzegorz Fijalek/Michal Bryl, Chile’s Marco Grimalt/Esteban Grimalt and Morocco’s Mohamed Abicha and Zouheir Elgraoui.

These are teams that, according to Evandro, will demand their highest level of attention and focus in Tokyo.

“The Polish are really strong, they are the top-seeded team in our pool for good reason,” the 2017 world champion said. “They haven’t had great results so far in 2021 but are really solid. The Chileans have great chemistry and are really experienced. It’s one of those matches in which you can’t blink. And Morocco, we don’t know much about them yet, but they’ll be dangerous opponents as the responsibility will be entirely on our side.”

Before Gstaad, Bruno and Evandro had last played internationally in Cancun

Evandro and Bruno missed three-straight World Tour events since late April, skipping the last tournament of the Cancun Hub and also ones in Sochi and Ostrava. With several more training hours on their bodies, they believe that the event in Gstaad provided them exactly what they needed ahead of the Olympics.

“We felt we would benefit more from training than playing at that moment,” Evandro said. “We’ve played in two events of the Brazilian Tour recently and made it to the final in both, which shows we’re playing well again. The plan was to get our rhythm back in Gstaad, which is always a special tournament and one that everyone loves playing at.”

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Bruno, a Rio 2016 Olympic champion, and Evandro won’t return to Brazil after the end of the Gstaad tournament. From Europe, they will head straight to Japan and when they get there, they know exactly what mindset they need to have.

“We need to take every match as a final, starting from the first one,” Evandro, who finished ninth in Rio five years ago with Pedro Solberg, added. “It’s the Olympics, there will be no such thing as an easy match for us. That needs to be our mindset.”