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Olympic champions promote their sport - "Children desperately want to play beach volleyball"
"We feel we are ambassadors and want to be an advertisement for our sport," said Reckermann. Since their success in front of Buckingham Palace, the lives of 30-year-old Brink and 33-year-old Reckermann have changed completely. Signings and television interviews are suddenly everyday occurences. "It's a situation we did not imagine before, and we could not imagine. It's great that such a thing is possible in beach volleyball," says Reckermann. "We're just trying to stay true to ourselves and not overplay the role." But the hype has already had positive effects in his private life: "Friends have told me that their children now really want to play beach volleyball. That's great!" Unfortunately the home court at Timmerdorfer wasn’t as welcoming as the cameras around it. Brink and Reckermann lost in the German championship semifinal and then were unable to play for bronze due to an injury to Brink’s back. They made way for Jonathan Erdmann and Kay Matysik to win their first German title against Eric Koreng and Alexander Walkenhorst – the pair that, playing in their very first tournament, knocked Brink and Reckermann out in the semifinal. Sebastian Dollinger and Stefan Windscheif got the bronze while the Olympic champions settled for fourth place. Injuries are nothing new to the London 2012 champions. The pair was in danger of missing the Olympics altogether when Reckermann was out suffering from shoulder pain earlier in the season. "It was not easy, going four to six weeks with no improvement at all," he recalls. "It makes me proud of how we dealt with it as a team," added Brink, "if you look back now, it's a beautiful story." The two are taking their future a day at a time and not planning too far ahead. "We will continue to work in the coming year," said Brink. "We cannot say what it looks like for the 2016 Olympics. By winter next year we may be ready to say something." Download highresolution |
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