Fabiana Alvim

Transcription

I remember that our first match was against Algeria, which wasn't even such a tough team, but the butterflies in my stomach, the excitement about stepping onto the court and touching the ball, for the referee to blow that whistle so that I felt like I was in the Games It was a strange anxiety, an odd feeling of unease. And when we played our first match, you forget about those nerves and live in that moment. But until that moment, to this day I still get butterflies in my stomach, a different kind of churning in my stomach. Man, the most difficult match was the semi-final. Firstly, because it was against China who were playing at home. They were the current Olympic champions and Brazil had never made it through an Olympic semi-final, you know. So breaking that barrier and making it to an Olympic final was really tough. I remember that at the start of the match, I was really nervous, you know. In the first set, you could see the tension in the eyes and movements of our team, you know. And there we're three points ahead and we just need one more, you know, for the gold medal. And I remember the time really clearly... Ah, here comes Fofão's serve, and the ball's going to Logan again, and she hits it out. It's over. Man, it's unbelievable, you know... I remember the ball going out so clearly... And we were the Olympic champions. Gosh, it was... it was awesome. I think that image... And I look straight at Fofão, the first person in front of me is Fofão, who's a great symbol of that team. And then we start crying and we start enjoying that, the gold medal moment. When you win a gold medal, you know, you've reached the top. It's everything you can imagine about winning. There's the huge challenge of trying to repeat the magic, to keep it up, right? What's more, I think that you have to keep motivated to win something that you've already won. We had an awful first week, you know. I would say that the first week was disastrous and nearly jeopardized the chances of the Brazilian team. Gosh, unlike the first week, we had a second week that was... kind of... completely different, you know. Man, this is the first set of the final. It was something... It was horrible, disastrous. The performance of a team without confidence. And I remember that we were saying "guys we've made it to the final. Let's at least put up a fight". And they were all over it. I remember that everything they did worked. The ball went up, the ball hit... Man, it was 24:11. Ah, the set point. They're going to win it, because that first set was 25:11, I remember. Horrible. I remember after that we were just saying "guys, let's go to the game. Let's at least play". And then we started the second and third sets with the upper hand, and they got a bit worried, because until then, erm... Gosh, they hadn't... No team had put up a fight, you know. They'd always been in the lead. And then everything started to go right for us, everything was going right for us. And then, in the third set, we were playing really well... we scored a series of points, we were 7 points up. Oh, that's the set point. Jaque's defending, the ball goes to Fernanda Garai, she turns, and it's over. Man, it's unbelievable. It's funny that we didn't want the national anthem to finish. We wanted to sing the second part. I remember that I cried a lot. When you finish the national anthem, you don't really know what to do, kind of, who to look at... I didn't want to leave the podium. I remember that I didn't want to get down. Is it going to finish? No! Awesome.