Coach Vladimir Alekno joins his players in celebration after the one-side victory over Canada
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, August 17, 2016 – Russian Vladimir Alekno, who coached his team to a gold medal in London after a bronze in Beijing, said the Olympic Games volleyball tournament really starts with the quarterfinals.
Alekno made his short comment at the press conference following the straight-set victory of Russia over Canada in the first match of the final-eight stage of the competition on Wednesday morning.
Vladimir Alekno, Coach of Russia: These are my third Olympic Games and everybody knows that the Olympics really start with the quarterfinals. This match is already in the past and I am satisfied with today’s performance of my team. Players coming off the bench did a good job and now we have to rest and prepare for the semifinals.
Sergey Tetyukhin, Captain of Russia: This one is the best we have played so far in the tournament. We were really prepared to play and the guys from the bench came into action and played well.
Glenn Hoag, Coach of Canada: We didn’t have our best performance. We struggled with our reception handling the Russian serves. Without a good reception is very difficult to perform. We made a high number of errors and lacked patience. We have a group of very young players on this team, so now our look is on Tokyo 2020.
Fred Winters, Captain of Canada: They had a much stronger game than us. We made way too many errors, in serves, receptions, net touches, everything. It is very difficult to compete when you make so many mistakes.