News 28/05/2015 Brazilian veterans hold off Polish junior world champions Moscow, Russia, May 28, 2015 - For the second-straight day at the US$800,000 Moscow Grand Slam, the opening men’s pool play match here Thursday featured “the young and old” of the FIVB World Tour.Wednesday’s opening match paired Olympians Phil Dalhausser and Sean Rosenthal against Oleg Stoyanovskiy and Artem Yarzutkin with the Russian teenagers upsetting the American in two sets. Stoyanovskiy and Yarzutkin were “wild card” entries for the 2015 Moscow Grand Slam after winning the gold medal last August at the Nanjing 2014 Youth Olympic Games in China.Thursday’s first match on the center court of the Vodny Stadium Beach Sports Center featured the legendary Brazilian team of Emanuel Rego and Ricardo Santos against Maciej Kosiak and Maciej Rudol, the FIVB under-23 world champions from Poland. This time, age defeated youth with Emanuel and Ricardo posting a 2-1 (18-21, 21-18, 15-13) victory in 53 minutes.Emanuel and Ricardo are guaranteed of finishing ninth in the Moscow Grand Slam as the Brazilians have clinched the Pool D title on the strength of defeating the Poles and compatriots Vitor Felipe and Alvaro Filho Wednesday. Emanuel and Ricardo close group play later Thursday against 0-2 Theo Brunner and Nick Lucena of the United States.“The younger players are coming fast and furious,” said the 40-year old Ricardo. “The Poles played very well and are capable of defeating any team. It was a tough match and we had to play very hard to win. All the young teams are much stronger and more capable that what it was 10 years ago.”The 42-year old Emanuel started playing professionally in 1994 when the young Poles were only a year old. The 2015 FIVB World Tour campaign is Emanuel’s 22nd while Ricardo is in his 18th full season on the international circuit. Thursday’s opening match was the partnership’s 91st FIVB-sanctioned event together with the victory over the Poles match win No. 453 (656 total matches, 69.1 winning percentage).Together, Emanuel and Ricardo have claimed a record 34 FIVB titles, including 33 on the world tour. Individually, the Brazilians rank one-two in FIVB titles with Emanuel sitting at 78 and Ricardo posting 56.“Yes, our goal is qualifying for the Rio Olympics,” said Emanuel. “After seeing how good the younger players around the world are getting, it will be a tough journey for two of the senior citizens on the world tour. In addition to playing good against the world’s best players, we have to compete hard for our spot in the Olympics against veteran and up-and-coming players in Brazil. Ricardo and I do not feel that we are getting older as we are in good shape. We just feel that the world is producing more and better Beach Volleyball players.”For Emanuel, he is seeking his sixth-straight Olympic berth after competing in 1996, 2000, 2004 (gold), 2008 (bronze) and 2012 (silver) Summer Games with four different partners. Ricardo teamed with the Emanuel for the Athens 2004 gold and Beijing 2008 bronze and won his first Olympic medal (silver) at the Sydney 2000 Summer Games. He also competed at the London 2012 Games with Pedro Cunha as the paired finish fifth by losing to eventual gold medal winners Julius Brink and Jonas Reckermann in the quarter-finals.Emanuel is the winningest player in the history of Beach Volleyball with 154 overall titles. He is now three wins short of 1,200 victories at FIVB-sanctioned events with the Moscow Grand Slam being his record 246th international event. Ricardo ranks second on the list for FIVB events play at 209. Print this Page News {{item.LocalShortDate}} {{item.Title}} All the News