By Ilaria Mastio
As 2021 started, two young athletes have only one thing in mind: the Olympic Games.
Javier and Joaquin Bello, 20, are two young beach volleyball players with a lot of excitement for the months ahead. They have a lot of work to do to reach Tokyo, and lockdown hasn’t made it any easier.
The Continental Cup is the only qualification route that they can take, as they are too far away to qualify by world ranking points. There are three rounds, and they are in the second round which will take place in May, with the finals happening in early June very close to the Olympics.
“When we moved to London in 2011, we started playing more volleyball because we could play together and there were more opportunities. As we progressed, we developed a big passion, because we could see that we had potential to succeed and take the sport to another level in this country,” said Javier Bello.
As London isn’t the best place to train for beach volley during winter, they moved to Spain to continue their training sessions. When they were in London, the facilities were closed during the first lockdown, and it was tough to train.
Joaquin said: “At the beginning, we struggled to stay motivated because we lost our usual routines and didn’t have any competitions to look forward to as they were all cancelled.
“We still kept training because we enjoy it and we used it to develop our game and link it to a long and productive preseason for 2021.”
The Bello brothers have been playing beach volley for the past ten years, and they always played together. They both agree that it can be hard to play with your brother, and there are often disagreements and the occasional conflict.
But overall it is an advantage from a technical and tactical point of view, and logistically it’s very easy to form a team and train consistently when your partner lives in the same house.
While they train in Tenerife, sometimes even twice a day, they follow online lectures. Joaquin is in his 3rd year of Medicine at Imperial College, while Javier is studying PPE (Philosophy, Politics and Economics) at Royal Holloway, and looking to graduate this summer.
They try to balance their passion for this sport with the desire to have an education, as they know this career won’t last forever.
One of their biggest supporters is their mum and manager, Barbara Echevarria. She’s always been involved in sport in a considerable number of various roles during her career.
“When my sons started to play internationally, and started achieving something nobody else had before, we realised that there was a lot of work that needed to be done behind the scenes, so that they could focus on their training and competitions and succeed at the elite level,” she said.
She is often busy filling applications for funding, securing training venues, booking travel, and coordinating their support team. “It is the side of minority sports that most people don’t get to see,” Barbara said.
Barbara always tries to follow them around the world when possible, but sometimes it’s a lot. In 2019 alone, they travelled to 13 countries and covered 113.000 km.
As the Olympic qualifications are approaching, Javier and Joaquin are trying to bring some interest to this sport, which is not followed in England. Hopefully, Tokyo will be a new chapter for them.
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