10 Brazilian athletes who had to overcome themselves to win

Being a champion in high performance sport is not an easy task for any human being. But for some athletes, the path to reaching the top of their discipline has certain additional obstacles. That make your victories even more impressive.

O awesome.club tells below the story of 10 Brazilian athletes who needed to build a history of overcoming to enter the history of our sport. Get to know each one of them and fall in love with their trajectories as well.

In September 2012, when she was just 33 years old, the Brazilian national team athlete suffered a stroke while warming up for a match. Dani was hospitalized for ten days and had speech impairments for more than a month. What could be the end of her career started a beautiful story: a year and two months later, Dani helped the national team win its first world title.

The Phenomenon’s career was marked by serious injuries, but his biggest overcoming story began in April 2000, when he tore a tendon and ligaments in his right knee in a match for Inter Milan. It wasn’t his first knee injury, but his most serious. Contrary to expectations, Ronaldo played in the 2002 World Cup, was top scorer and decisive for the team’s fifth title.

It’s no exaggeration to say that one of the best big wave surfers nearly died in 2013 when she was knocked out for nine minutes trying to drop a 24-meter giant and fall. She had to get cardiac massage in attendance, and despite only a broken ankle, it took her two years to get back into surfing. Five years later, in 2018, she successfully tackled a 21-meter wave and entered the Guinness Book of Records for the biggest wave ever surfed by a woman.

In the second race of the 1987 Formula 1 season, the Brazilian driver suffered a serious accident at Imola, the same circuit where Ayrton Senna would die seven years later. Then in the Williams team, Piquet fought a fierce title dispute with teammate, Englishman Nigel Mansell, even suffering the consequences of the crash in San Marino. “I lost track of the braking distance, but I didn’t tell the doctors or they would forbid me to run,” says Piquet. At the end of the year, he won the battle and ended up winning his third and final world title.

It is not difficult to imagine the difficulty that a black athlete, of poor origin and resident of a favela in Niterói, had to stand out in Brazilian sport in the 1960s. Aida dos Santos traveled to the 1964 Olympic Games in Tokyo, discredited by Brazilian leaders , without proper equipment and even got injured in the high jump qualifiers. She overcame all adversity to be in fourth place, close to the medal, and set the Brazilian record that would last 32 years.

The gymnast was the current two-time world champion on the floor when he arrived in Beijing for the 2008 Olympic Games. A favourite, in the final he fell sitting down and was left without a medal. His fall became a joke, Hypolito was accused of yellowing. In 2012, another chance. No longer so favourite, he came from a bronze in the previous year’s Worlds. He fell again and didn’t even make it to the final. More criticism, more jokes. Four years later, he arrived in Rio, for the 2016 Olympics, a veteran and without favoritism. He surprised with an excellent performance that earned him the silver medal, leaving behind all the sporting and personal suffering, as he revealed years later that he had suffered childhood abuse.

At the 2012 Olympic Games in London, Rafaela Silva was disqualified for having made an illegal move in the round of 16 against Hungarian Hedvig Karakas. Then world runner-up, the judoka from Rio de Janeiro who grew up in Cidade de Deus had her social media flooded with racist insults. She was 20 years old. She faced depression, thought about quitting the sport, went three months without training. But she resisted and, the following year, won the world title in the 57-kilogram category. In 2016, in Rio, redemption: she hung the Olympic gold medal on her chest.

The athlete from Campinas was born with a congenital malformation of the arms and right leg. His physical limitation did not prevent him from leading a life as close to normal as possible. As a child, he played with other children—so much so that he was constantly breaking his prostheses while playing sports. As an adult, he became the greatest Paralympic swimmer of all time: he won a total of 24 medals in three editions of the Games – and, at 30, dreams of closing the account in Tokyo, in 2020.

In the opening game of the 2011 Pan American Games, winger Jaqueline suffered an unusual injury in volleyball: in a collision, she ended up having a brain concussion and fractured two vertebrae. The diagnosis was at least two months without playing, a relief from what could be much worse. And Jaqueline returned in time to win her second Olympic gold medal in 2012 and bronze at the 2013 World Championships.

The striker was 27 years old and playing in Turkey when he was diagnosed with a serious heart problem. After having his career put in jeopardy, he stayed away for a long time to be treated and managed to return to the lawns successfully. He was the top scorer in the 2004 Brazilian Championship and also broke the record for the most goals in a single edition of the competition: 34. Coração Valente, as he was nicknamed, now works as a coach.

So, which one of these did you think is the biggest overcoming story? Tell us, leave your comment!