How can you travel back in time?
Brazil’s Ana Patricia Silva Ramos and Eduarda "Duda" Santos Lisboa have the answer: Win an Olympic gold medal.
The Youth Olympic Games champions in beach volleyball relived their golden memories from Nanjing 2014 when they stepped on the podium again late Friday night, 9 August, at the Olympic Games Paris 2024. And there was plenty of déjà vu about this moment in the French capital. Ana Patricia and Duda were playing together again, they beat a Canadian pair in three sets in the final again and the Olympic rings were once more their backdrop.
The difference was that this time around, their bond was even stronger.
"We have been remembering this every day. The Nanjing final was against Canada, and this one, too," Ana Patricia told Olympics.com after winning Olympic gold against Canadians Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson. "Many tournaments we made the finals against Canada, so we always wondered 'what if.' We feel so accomplished, so certain of what we built from years ago. It helped us in achieving this connection, this friendship."
- Paris 2024 women’s beach volleyball: Final preview as Brazil take on Canada for Olympic title
- Paris 2024 women’s beach volleyball: All results, as Brazil, Australia, Switzerland, Canada advance to semi-finals
Ana Patricia and Duda: Teen champions in Nanjing
The last time Ana Patricia and Duda stood on an Olympic podium, they were both 16 and still fresh on the beach volleyball scene.
Theirs had been an accidental partnership, but a successful one. They battled through the stages of the Youth Olympic tournament all the way to the final, where they beat Canadian twin sisters Megan and Nicole McNamara in three sets.
Gold was a good feeling, but shortly after, in 2015, the Brazilian pair broke apart. The athletes moved to different cities and formed new partnerships.
This decision appeared to work out for both of them. Ana Patricia and Duda moved up the ranks, had solid performances at various tournaments and managed to qualify for Tokyo 2020 with their respective partners.
Duda paired up with Rio 2016 silver medallist Agatha Bednarczuk and made it to the Round of 16 in the Japanese capital. Ana Patricia advanced to the quarter-finals together with Rebecca Cavalcante.
It was a solid result for their first Olympic Games, but back home in Brazil the prevailing mood was that of heartbreak. Tokyo 2020 was the first Olympic Games where Brazil did not get at least one medal in the women's or men’s beach volleyball tournaments since the sport was introduced in the programme at Atlanta 1996.
The first-time Olympians felt the full weight of that disappointment.
"I used to consider Tokyo a big trauma in my life, especially because of all the offences I received online," Ana Patricia said. "But since then, I took that as a huge lesson in my life. I think I needed to go through that in order to grow as a person, as an athlete. What happened today wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t experienced the things I experienced back then."
Ana Patricia Silva Ramos (left) and Eduarda "Duda" Santos Lisboa won gold at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games at Nanjing 2014.
Under pressure, together: The pros and cons of representing Brazil in beach volleyball
When Ana Patricia and Duda announced that they were reuniting in early 2022, the whole country lit up with expectations of another Olympic triumph. The pressure was unlike anything the young women had experienced before, and it only continued to build in the lead-up to Paris 2024.
They arrived to the Olympic city as the world's No. 1-ranked pair, reigning Pan American Games champions and recent world champions. Their mission was clear. Brazil had not won the gold medal in women’s beach volleyball in 28 years. Youth Olympic champions Ana Patricia and Duda, now 26 years old, were the ones to get the job done.
Paris 2024 would not be another Tokyo 2020.
The high expectations placed on the Brazilian pair were palpable at the Eiffel Tower Stadium. They could be seen in the venue's packed stands and in the Paris Métro, filled with people wearing Brazilian jerseys after every match. They could be heard in the voices of the Brazilian announcers, loud and emotional, screaming to spur on Ana Patricia and Duda, especially since every men’s pairing has fallen out of medal contention.
Down on the sandy court under the shadow of the French capital's most iconic landmark, the two women were trying to live up to these expectations.
Their run at Paris 2024 was dazzling. Until the quarter-final against Latvia, Ana Patricia and Duda had not lost a single set in Paris. That victory pitted them against Australia's Tokyo 2020 silver medallists Mariafe Artacho del Solar and Taliqua Clancy, and it was here their resilience was truly tested.
The Brazilians went down in the first set of the 57-minute-long semi-final, but rallied to win the next set and tie-break. Upon realising they had just booked a ticket to the Olympic final, the duo fell on their knees, raw emotion sweeping over them.
Duda dedicated the win to her late grandmother and revealed that she dreamed of her for the first time since her death the night before the big match.
“If it weren’t for my grandmother, none of this would have happened," Duda told Cazé TV. "My mother is adopted. They knocked on my grandmother’s door and my mother was there, so this is something out of a movie. For the first time in my life, after she passed away, I dreamed about my grandmother. I said ‘Paty,’ and she hugged me. I owe it all to her. She was poor, she built a beautiful family, she was a warrior. And she is there in heaven shining her light on us."
The Olympic final, "Imagine" and some birthday magic
The final showdown put Ana Patricia and Duda against world's no. 7-ranked duo in Canada's Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson. And if the Brazilians were out to regain their country’s winning streak in beach volleyball, the Canadians were eager to seize that country’s first ever gold medal in the sport.
Canada’s last and only medal in beach volleyball came at Atlanta 1996 when John Child and Mark Heese won bronze in the men’s tournament. Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson wanted to make sure the country's first Olympic medal in women's beach volleyball would be gold.
A victory over the Brazilian pair would also be, in a way, revenge. The athletes faced each other in the final at the Santiago 2023 Pan American Games, with the Brazilians taking the win 2-0.
Humana-Paredes and Wilkerson came out strong, dominating the start of the first set. But spurred on by a large contingent of Brazilian fans decked out in yellow, flags at the ready, Ana Patricia and Duda fought back to tie the score at 17-17. The pairs then continued fighting point for point until Brazil took the first set 26-24.
The second set was more even at the start, but the Canadians broke out after the 10-10 mark and sped away to take it 12-21.
By the tie break, Brazilian announcers were screaming “Vai Brasil!” on repeat like an incantation, their enthusiasm multiplying when Brazil seized the first two points. Canada responded, and as the points continued to pile up on the scoreboard, so did the tensions.
A DJ's timely interjection of John Lennon's "Imagine" helped to cool the tensions during the women's beach volleyball final.
At one point, Ana Patricia and Wilkerson got tied up in a dispute across the net. Their gestures got increasingly more assertive, but then something magical happened.
John Lennon’s “Imagine” came on the speakers, and as people started to sing the song's timeless lines, calling for peace and unity, the athletes soon started smiling and laughing, the incident all but forgotten.
"Competitors show up in lots of different ways. I think, me and the fellow Brazilian, we have more similar styles, which is a little bit in your face, and it just came from wanting it so bad," Wilkerson told Olympics.com afterwards. "Actually, it was a total miscommunication. But when you're so in it, and you want it and you've worked so hard and you won't let anyone take it away from you, those sides of you come out and the 'Imagine' song was just a great reminder, like, 'OK, guys, it's OK, we're gonna keep playing fair, keep playing strong,' And we talked to each other after the game. It was all love and respect."
"I have to say, I loved it," Humana-Paredes added. "I loved it because it shows the intensity of sport. It shows the competitiveness. It shows that we are more than just athletes. We have emotion."
Eduarda "Duda" Santos Lisboa (left) and Ana Patricia Silva Ramos celebrate winning Brazil's first Olympic gold in women's beach volleyball in 28 years.
There was plenty of emotion shown in the next several minutes as Brazil took the tie-break 15-10.
Realising they had won Olympic gold, Duda screamed and stretched out her arms as she walked over to her teammate who stood frozen, hands over her mouth, her expression one of utter disbelief.
Ana Patricia remained in this frozen-like state as Duda rushed to the stands to embrace family members and friends. Once the realisation sunk in, she dropped to her knees, her head bent to the sand.
“I had an elbow injury, bone edema. I’ve had a hernia disc for six months on my back," Ana Patricia revealed later. "I couldn’t practise for more than 40 minutes for the past three months. I wondered how I would be able to do it with all the pain I was feeling. But it worked out, another hurdle was won. It’s a lot. If we are talking about every problem we faced … pain is the least of the problems."
Duda soon came to join her partner, kneeling on the sand.
"It’s over, thank God!" she said of finally having the pressure off her shoulders. "This pressure is over, we did it, we are Olympic champions. It’s something hard to live up to. We worked a lot mentally so we wouldn’t think about it and think about what we worked on.
"A lot of work, dedication, persistence and love for the sport [went into this medal]. This medal is a little piece of everything we built since we started in the sport."
The pair admitted they had a bit of "luck" on their side as well.
“We wore yellow and the same top and bikini every game," Duda said. "When we got out of bed, we got out on the same side every time. We hung our clothes the same way. In my life I am normal, but at the Olympics I said, 'OK, let’s do it.' ”
There was, perhaps, also the factor of multiple birthday wishes coming true. The Brazilian pair had celebrated one of the athletes' birthdays in Paris for three consecutive years. Ana Patricia's birthday falls on 29 September, which coincided with the Paris Elite 16 stages in 2022 and 2023. In 2024, it was Duda's turn to celebrate her birthday in the French capital, and she did so in grand fashion. The Brazilian pair faced Italian duo Valentina Gottardi and Marta Menegatti on Duda's big day, 1 August, and won their Olympic pool match in straight sets.
Their Olympic journey now complete, the Brazilian flag rose above the venue and the nation's anthem was sung so loud it would have been heard at the top of the Eiffel Tower. Ana Patricia and Duda now have a personal piece of that Eiffel Tower that they are taking home as part of their medals.
