The two, who spend most of their season training in the United States, were also able to get one of the most accomplished coaches in the sport to work with them, veteran Marcio Sicoli, who has multiple Olympic medals in his resumé, including gold at the London 2012 Games with Americans Kerri Walsh Jennings and Misty May-Treanor.
The Olympics are the ultimate goal for Melissa and Brandie and although they are on pace to qualify via the Olympic Rankings, currently sitting in sixth place in the list, the Canadians know that a victory at the World Championship would put them much closer to Paris as it would earn their country a spot in the Games.
That path was the one that took Melissa to her first Olympic appearance in Tokyo two years ago as former partner Sarah Pavan and her triumphed at the World Championship in Hamburg, in 2019, and qualified Canada. Brandie was also close to becoming a world champion last year, but ended up taking silver with Sophie Bukovec.
“That was and still is one of the most epic feelings I have felt in the sport,” Melissa said about her title in 2019. “That victory afforded us the privilege to focus on seeding and directly preparing for the Olympics rather than focusing on getting the minimum results needed just to qualify. It’s tremendously helpful that both of us have that experience of going the distance at the World Championship, both making the finals. It’s a long tournament and you need to have strategies to withstand it and I trust we both know how to do that. It would be pretty historic to do it again.”
