Perušić was stopped twice by his body shell. “It’s a warning that I’m getting old,” says the 29-year-old, only half-jokingly. At the beginning of the summer, he injured his abdominal muscle at a tournament in Luxembourg. With his partner, he had to miss two tournaments plus the European Championship in Vienna, which Schweiner played with Tadeáš Trousil.
The players of the Strahov Beach Club then had to start a tough program of tournaments in order to collect points for the Olympic qualification, before the triumph at the Mexican World Championship gave them the certainty of participation in Paris.
They ended their life season by participating in the beach volleyball equivalent of the Tournament of Champions in Doha, Qatar, but had to withdraw before the quarterfinals because of Perušič’s blocked neck.
“Now I’m spinning almost like an owl,” he said at the announcement of the Sportsman of the Year, where he and Schweiner placed second behind the winning tennis player Markéta Vondroušová. “I will definitely be ready to jump into training, I would attribute that problem to the long season and the demanding last months,” he said.
This year, his health slowed him down in two of the three most important tournaments of the season, luckily not the main one. But Perušič, together with the entire team, will now be thinking about how to take care of his body as best as possible, so that it does not give up next year at the most important moment before the Paris Olympics.
Photo: Vlastimil Vacek, Sport.cz
Ondřej Perušič with his wife Mariana.
After all, they already learned how painful it is to lose a chance for Olympic success during the Covid Games in Tokyo… “The Olympics will definitely be preceded by intensive preparation, it would be a big mistake if I got injured during it. We will definitely focus on that,” he nods.
“I think it’s also my fault that I overestimated my abilities and did too many things at once,” he suspects that he will have to cut back. But where? “Perhaps in playing chess, which is my addiction,” he smiled. “There is always some part of procrastination that can be reduced, I will have to somehow reorganize my life myself,” Perušič suspects.
The successful Czech couple will certainly benefit from a few extra days off over the holidays, which they earned by being certain of Olympic participation. But the Czechs can’t be idle because of the effort to put in the best possible effort.
“We have to play the first tournament at the beginning of March, so we will start preparing in mid-January. We have less than a month to get together and heal the injuries,” adds Schweiner.
2023-12-25 05:10:55
#Warning #Czech #world #champions #cut
