From Nanjing 2014 to Paris 2024: Youth Olympic champions Ana Patricia and Duda on track to strike gold again a decade later
Brazil's Ana Patricia Silva Ramos and Eduarda "Duda" Santos Lisboa were golden the first time they paired up, at the Youth Olympic Games. After missing the podium at Tokyo 2020 while playing with different partners, they are now enjoying a dominant streak on the road to Paris 2024 - this time, together.
Beach Volleyball
Nothing brings old friends together like a shared quest for Olympic gold.
Having tasted it once, at the 2014 Youth Olympic Games in Nanjing, Brazil’s top women's pair in beach volleyball, Ana Patricia Silva Ramos and Eduarda “Duda” Santos Lisboa, are hoping to strike gold again on an even bigger stage at Paris 2024.
The difference is that this time, instead of an accidental teen partnership, which broke apart the following year, Ana Patricia and Duda will be the pair to beat. Ranked No.1 in the world as of October 2023, they are also 2022 world champions and recently won their fourth Beach Pro Elite 16 tournament this year.
"We are living in a cool moment where we are able to look and say, 'This is our identity'," Ana Patricia told Olympics.com of their new top status.
The 2023 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships, which are held in Tlaxcala, Mexico from 6 to 15 October, are the next major step in the team's pathway to Paris 2024. Winning the tournament would earn a direct Olympic quota, and the two are just one win away which is also beneficial as the worlds are one of the events that counts towards the FIVB Olympic Ranking.
Ana Patricia and Duda: First Olympic journey
Ana Patricia's journey into beach volleyball was not a straight path. Born in Espinosa, an inland municipality hundreds of kilometres from Brazil's world-famous beaches, she played football, futsal, and handball growing up. It was while playing handball that the youngster was taken aside and invited to try out for the state beach volleyball team.
Six months after moving to Greater Belo Horizonte to pursue her newfound passion for the sand-based sport, Ana Patricia made it to the 2014 Youth Olympic Games where she partnered with fellow 16-year-old Duda. The pair won gold, beating Canadian twin sisters Megan and Nicole McNamara and showing signs of the magic to come.
It was a fairytale beginning for the Brazilian teens, but their partnership proved short-lived. They broke apart in 2015 and formed new pairs in different cities.
Over the following years their journeys ran in parallel, but separately, heading to Tokyo 2020 in 2021. Duda paired up with Rio 2016 silver medallist Agatha Bednarczuk and made it to the round of 16 in the Japanese capital. Ana Patricia and her partner Rebecca Cavalcanti went one round further, but suffered a surprise exit in the quarter-finals.
"It was a very difficult moment there, because we have a country that has a lot of expectations, let's be honest about this, as it is a sport that has always brought medals," Ana Patricia told Olympics.com of finishing off the podium in Tokyo. "For us who were there representing the country and also representing our dream, it was a very difficult moment. But today I understand that it was an important moment too, and I think there was a lot of learning there."
Ana Patricia and Duda: Together again
Matured and humbled by their results at Tokyo 2020 in 2021, Ana Patricia and Duda decided to reunite at the start of 2022.
"It wasn't something we planned. It was really God's will," Ana Patricia told Olympics.com, looking back at the decision that has taken her and Duda to the top of the world's elite.
"I had to re-learn how to be an athlete because I had to deconstruct a lot of what I believed in to form a new team, with different professionals, with different beliefs."
One year and nine months after re-learning how to play together, the Brazilian duo are leading the world rankings and have won four of the eight Elite 16 stages in 2023. They won in Ostrava, Gstaad, Hamburg, and, most recently, in Paris.
The victory on the iconic Roland Garros courts came a week before the 2023 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships where Ana Patricia and Duda are looking to defend their title.
"We don't really like counting our victories. We need to go step by step, one at a time," Ana Patrícia told us of how winning the Paris Elite 16 title set them up for the Worlds in Tlaxcala. "It was a very good victory, it gives us confidence, but we need to rest first. Once we get there, we'll start all over again, because it's another story.
"Teams rarely defend their titles, thank goodness. Duda and I are managing to have this consistency, these good results. But we understand that at the world championships anything can happen."
Birthday presents in Paris
Winning or placing well at the 2023 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships will get Ana Patricia and Duda a few steps closer to making their second Olympic appearances, at Paris 2024.
Lately, each trip they take to the French capital ends in celebration. And not just on the beach volleyball courts.
Ana Patricia has celebrated her birthday, which falls on 29 September, in Paris two years in a row due to the Paris Elite 16 stages taking place around the same time. Duda, of course, was there on both occasions to make the celebrations bigger.
With Duda celebrating her 26th birthday on 1st August, during the next Olympics, the players are hoping this birthday luck will rub off on a smooth journey to Paris 2024.
"I want to truly experience the Olympic Games," Ana Patricia told Olympics.com. “My greatest joy will be actually experiencing them.”
And if she were to get an Olympic gold medal in August 2024 as an early birthday present, too?
"I think I would spend three days crying. There are so many things that we live and give up for that."