The Brazil Olympic Committee (COB) has named beach volleyball coach Leandro “Brachola” Andreão as their Coach of the Year in the single or doubles category. Brachola is the coach of world champions Alison Cerutti and Bruno Schmidt

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The coach of Alison/Bruno was named Coach of the Year in the singles/doubles category; Photocredit: Andreas Langreiter

Brachola was awarded with his prize at the Brazil Olympic Awards in Rio de Janeiro on December 15.

Brachola is the mastermind behind the duo Alison/Bruno and was awarded for his coaching talent; Photocredit: Brazil Olympic Committee

“I am very happy to be recognized for a task that we have been developing for a long time and culminated in this great season with Alison and Bruno,” he said. “It is an award that I receive individually, but I share it with an extremely competent technical committee, every one of whose work was essential.”

Bruno and Alison will represent Brazil at the Rio Olympics next year and will be going into 2016 as the world champions. They also won four World Tour events in 2015.

“We started 2015 knowing that we would have major challenges,” Brachola explained. “Alison had his knee operated on at the end of 2014, then underwent an appendectomy. We had to restructure the team and we had the added pressure of trying to get an Olympic berth. But they worked very hard and overcame a lot.”

Alison and Bruno will be vying for the Athlete of the Year honour at the awards ceremony and will be up against the women’s beach volleyball duo of Agatha and Barbara.