Beach volleyball players who come from landlocked countries normally lack one key ingredient for their sport - a beach.

So when Rio de Janeiro was announced as the 2016 Olympic Games host city, instead of moving to Rio to train on Copacabana beach, Alexander Horst and Clemens Doppler decided to bring the Copacabana to Austria.

"Four years ago we brought a sample of sand from Copacabana to Austria and brought it to an industry that produces all kinds of sand," Doppler said.

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With a bottle full of sand the company created a one-to-one ratio to match that of the Copacabana beach, where the Rio 2016 beach volleyball competition is being held. "People thought we brought all the sand in a plane to Austria. We didn't do that," he said.

The Copacabana replica sand makes up three indoor and three outdoor courts that the two players have been practising on for three years now.

Home crowd show their colours on Copacabana beach, cheer Brazil on to victory

As they arrived in Rio they found that the training courts in the Beach Volleyball Arena are about the same sand as the ones have been practising on, but the beach on the centre court, where the matches take place, is not.

According to Doppler, the difference may be due to the depth of the court and the amount that the sand has been strained. But still he reckons their home version of the Copacabana helped prepare them for the Games.

The duo, who lost their first match at the Games against Italy's Alex Rangieri and Adrian Ignacio Carambola Raurich on Saturday, came back strong by beating local favourites Alison Cerutti and Bruno Oscar Schmidt in three sets on Monday.

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