Placed at the position no. 13 at the seedings at the European Championships in Munich Marcos FREITAS is Portugal’s higher ranked player in Men’s Singles Event. Two times gold medal winner in doubles in Gdansk Sopot 2011 and in Team’s Event in front of home crowd in Lisbon 2014 Marcos also reached the final in the Singles in Ekaterinburg 2015. In Rusia in 2008 Saint Petersburg he won bronze in Doubles and again in Gdansk Sopot he was third in Team’s events. He was third in Singles in Warsaw as well.
Few weeks before the start of the European Championships he built up his shape at the tournaments.
“I am very happy with my performance in recent events. I played at the summer series in Budapest and WTT Contender in Tunisia. Overall I had three very strong tournaments and I played a lot of good matches. It came back after my shoulder injury which made a lot of difficulties for me. Now I feel better I can play without pain. I am fully recovered and very motivated to practice to return in my usual shape ” said Marcos.
Last phase of the preparation FREITAS will do in Portugal with the national team.
“It will not be a big group since it is holiday time but most important is that it will be very high quality team. We have very good conditions here and I believe that this week we will have a good training. It is more than enough time to prepare for the Europeans since it was very long season ” stated Marcos.
FREITAS underlined how much European Championships is important competition for him.
“Twice I have been at the medal rostrum in Singles by being second and third and I have not reached my dream yet. My goal is to be the European champion. Now I think I am in good shape. Not perfect though but I think it will improve as I go further into the tournament. Everybody will be in Munich there is no big names missing. In adition we did not have the draw yet so it is difficult to say how far I can go. Right now I am focused on myself and my preparations; I am not thinking of others.”
First goal for Marcos is to reach the quarterfinal and then to fight for the place at the medal rostrum.
“I will be very satisfied if that happens but it will be difficult. Europe is very strong now; we have a few very good young players and still very strong experienced ones. I cannot say who is the favorite and that is why I think it will be very interesting to play at the European Championships and I am sure there will be good matches to watch. There are many good players from Germany Sweden France Croatia Slovenia…”stated Marcos FREITAS at the end.
