Spanish Martin de la Puente was awarded this Saturday after winning his second Wheelchair Tennis Elite title, representing ALLOS, at the third edition of the tournament held at the Rio Open presented by Claro. He highlighted the importance of the event for wheelchair tennis.

“It’s very special. The people in Rio are incredible. I thank everyone, VLP (Vale La Pierna) for making this possible, the entire organization, because we often have the vision that we want to have a role model, and we are lucky to have a very large group of magnificent athletes, and we hope this will be one of the best weeks here in Rio,” said Martin de la Puente.

“We will always come back to Rio, and we hope that little by little we will have more tournaments with VLP, which we think is at a good level, and we want to have good opportunities to show our sport,” he added.

Currently ranked number 3 in the world, Martin de la Puente won the final against Japan's Tokito Oda, the current leader of the world wheelchair tennis ranking, by 2 sets to 1, with scores of 7/6(4), 6/7(2) and 10-7.

In addition to the two finalists, Brazilian Daniel Rodrigues, currently ranked number 14 in the world, and Argentinian Gustavo Fernandez, fourth in the world ranking, also competed in the Wheelchair Tennis Elite.