The Paris Olympic Games They come to an end this Sunday and, despite the happiness of having seen the effort of some of the Brazilian athletes rewarded for the medals won, the feeling that remains is that the result could have been better. Much better. It is also certain that the dream of seeing Brazil establish itself as an Olympic power does not depend only on the individual talent of the athletes. Because of this, he will have to wait another four or eight years to be fulfilled. And if there is no urgent change in the way this issue is faced in the country, it may not even be enough time.
Olympic performance is something that is not built during the two weeks of the Games. It is the result of efficient work in the selection and training of athletes in the youth categories – and this has lasted for years. It is the result of continuous investments not only in the training of athletes and in the most appropriate equipment, but also in the choice and training of coaches in tune with what is most modern in the world in each sport.
This only happens as a consequence of a permanent policy, which cannot be limited to the four years of a political mandate. It depends on the definition of priorities accepted by everyone – which go from one government to the next until no one remembers how it all started.
The consolidation of a country as an Olympic power, it is good to insist on this point, does not depend only on the preparation and physical fitness of the athletes for the modalities they compete. It also depends on the consolidation of a mentality that makes victory a natural consequence of the good work developed. And, more than that, that fills the athletes with pride in the face of the chance to chase the podium not only as a personal achievement, but as an opportunity to defend the colors and spirit of their country every four.
Celebrities
None of the ideas above are original and some even seem impregnated with a boastfulness that does not match the current times. It is necessary, then, to add to what has been said a point that applies to Brazil and to any other country in the world, even the richest ones. It is about the following: a good sports training, in any modality, opens doors and offers opportunities for salespeople. And it can mean quite an opportunity for young people from the less privileged social strata to follow much more promising paths than they would have if they had not become athletes.
Nowadays, highly specialized athletes are treated as celebrities and some can earn millions in prizes, sponsorships and scholarships throughout their careers. It’s great that this is the case, because the success of some inspires and serves as an example for many people. The higher the quality of life achieved by the most outstanding athletes, the more and more young people will be led to follow the same path.
The more athletes like Bia Souza, gold in judo, and Rebeca Andrade, gold, silver and bronze in gymnastics, there are, more young people will be attracted to this path. The more pairs are inspired by the success of Duda and Ana Patrícia to practice volleyball on Brazilian beaches, the better! The joy of the podium is contagious. But to enjoy it, it takes effort.
This also goes for the silver medals won by Tatiana Weston-Webb, in surfing, Willian Lima, also in judo, Caio Bonfim, in Race Walking, and Isaquias Queiroz, in speed canoeing. And, also, the bronze medals of Bia Ferreira, in boxing, Larissa Pimenta, in judo, Augusto Akio and Rayssa Leal, in skateboarding, Gabriel Medina in surfing, Edval Passos, in Taekwondo and Alisson Santos, in Athletics.
From what was seen in Paris, the silver medal won by the women’s soccer team, in the face of the mediocre performance in the first rounds of the elimination phase, has a taste of overcoming that is equivalent to gold. And the bronze of the women’s volleyball team was the least that the team could demonstrate in the face of the superiority demonstrated throughout the tournament.
OK! What is under discussion here is not the personal performance of each member of the delegation. Reaching the Olympic Games is already a feat and each athlete who represented Brazil should have their value recognized, if only for the path they took to reach Paris. This, however, does not diminish the feeling that the country could have gone much further. And that many more athletes from the delegation could have returned home with medals hanging around their necks.
Some did not return because they had the bad luck of crossing paths with better-prepared opponents, from countries with more tradition in the sports they compete, or who were especially inspired on the day their paths crossed. These are the cases of two athletes from Rio de Janeiro. The first is Marcus d’Almeida, who put Brazil on the Archery map and fell to the Korean Kim Woo-jin — who finished the competition with the gold medal. The other is table tennis player Hugo Calderano, defeated by Sweden’s Truls Möregårdh — who finished with the silver medal — and then lost the bronze medal match to France’s Félix Lebrun.
Corrupt top hats
None of these athletes reached the point they have reached alone or can still reach. Some built their careers abroad and did not depend on official support to excel in the sport. This is the case of surfers, volleyball athletes and some more valued and well-structured sports. But no one can say, as has been heard several times in the broadcasts of the games, that the lack of investments is the main reason for the discreet performance that the Brazilian team had in comparison with other delegations from countries with economic potential equivalent to the Brazilian one.
Just the Athlete Scholarship that the government pays to athletes who win the podium at the Olympic Games, which is currently R$ 16,629, already means quite a help in a country where the average income of the worker, according to the PNAD, of the IBGE, does not reach R$ 3,000 per month. For information, Olympic athletes who did not win medals are entitled to a scholarship of R$ 3,437. International level athletes who do not reach the Olympics have a scholarship of R$ 2,051 and those at national level, R$ 1,025. Of the 277 athletes who represented Brazil in 39 sports held in Paris, 90% receive the scholarship.
calm! No one is saying that these values are absurd and that the Athlete Scholarship is enough to guarantee a nabobesque life to anyone! Not at all! This amount is just a starting point that is often increased by salaries paid by clubs and confederations, by prizes and, in many cases, by sponsorship quotas.
These numbers, of course, can improve and will certainly improve as a result of well-structured policies to encourage sports. Policies that need to be closely monitored by control bodies and protected by inspection mechanisms that ensure that the money invested in sport ends up in the pockets of athletes and coaches – and is not stolen by corrupt top hats who think it is right to enrich themselves at the expense of the sweat of others.
Nor is it being said here that money is the only spring that drives athletes to move forward. Not at all! There’s a lot more involved. When you see an established and multimillionaire athlete like basketball star LeBron James celebrate the victory over the Serbian team, which guaranteed the American Dream Team a presence in the final at the Paris Games, you realize that there is much more than money involved in an Olympic achievement. James receives about $50 million a year in salaries paid by his club, the Los Angeles Lakers, and another $50 million in income and endorsements. His companions are also millionaires. Even so, they fight for a medal and show that the value at stake there is greater than money — and involves achievement, overcoming, affirmation and much more.
Nuclear physics
The most unfortunate point in this whole story is that, years ago, the whole of Brazil believed in the dream that it could become a sports power with the realization of what became known as the most expensive games in Olympic history. A recent survey, published by the prestigious British magazine “The Economist”, points out that, based on the value of the dollar in 2022, there has never been a more expensive Olympics than the one held in Rio de Janeiro in 2016.
The survey begins with the US$ 11.6 billion spent on the 1992 games – which includes the construction of the works that promoted an urban revolution in Barcelona and transformed a decadent city into one of the most modern in the world. Then came the US$ 4.7 billion from Atlanta; Sydney’s $5.2 billion; the US$ 3.1 billion of Athens; Beijing’s $8.3 billion and London’s $16.8 billion.
The cost of the facilities in Rio was a staggering US$ 23.6 billion. Finally, there is Tokyo’s US$ 13.7 billion, inflated by about US$ 1 billion by safety measures against Covid-19. The Paris games cost, according to the magazine and based on the 2024 exchange rate, US$ 8.7 billion.
Being aware of these numbers is essential so that the arguments most repeated throughout the Paris games – that the problems of Brazilian sport are limited to the lack of resources – are no longer accepted as an absolute truth. No one is saying here that Brazilian sport has resources as abundant as those that feed the sports investments of powers such as the United States and China. Nor that the country has well-structured athlete training programs like those that exist in countries like Australia, South Korea, Great Britain, France, Germany and many others. But, in the same way, no one can say that Brazilian sport lives in a lack of resources and abandoned to its own fate.
Resources exist. Law 13.756, of December 2018, allocates to the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB) 1.7% of the amount collected from federal lottery bets. In 2023, based on the BOC’s financial statements, this represented R$ 250 million reais, which were distributed among the confederations that are responsible for Olympic sports in Brazil. Can the value increase? Of course you can.
For this to happen, it is necessary, first of all, to take better care of the investments made in the past – even if only to justify the demand for more resources. A sensible measure in this regard would be to stop using the Ministry of Sports, a public office that has never justified its existence, as a bargaining chip in political transactions and create a structure that, in fact, uses all the potential that sport can have as an instrument of social transformation.
By the way: you may have never noticed, but Brazil has a sports minister. His name is André Fufuca. He is a deputy for the PP of Maranhão and understands as much about public policies aimed at Olympic sports as the singer Anitta understands nuclear physics. In other words: probably, nothing! The point is that Anitta has no obligation to understand nuclear physics while Fufuca should at least master the basics of the subjects of her portfolio. But no. He is only in office only to ensure the loyalty of his colleagues in the bench to votes of interest to the government – which does not always happen. And the sport? Well… Sport, in this arrangement, is a mere detail.
Flag hoisted
Be that as it may, the truth is that, if the money available for investments is short, there should be, at least, effective criteria to make the best possible use of what has already been spent in the past. But no. Take, for example, what happened to most of the Olympic equipment built for the Rio games.
Managed by the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB) and used as a training center, the Maria Lenk Aquatic Park, in the Barra da Tijuca region, is, of all the Olympic venues, the one that produces the closest results to what was expected when they were built – although, in these games, the swimming team returned from Paris without any medals.
Can it improve? Of course! But given what happens with some of the other Olympic venues in Rio, the constant use of Maria Lenk is already quite a feat. Some of the courts of the Olympic Tennis Center, for example, lost conditions of use eight years after they were inaugurated. The Carioca Arenas 1, 2 and 3 are, at best, underused and the velodrome will be transformed into a museum. Another issue: Botafogo, the current administrator of Engenhão, the stadium that hosted the athletics events, defends the destruction of the track around the lawn to make better use of the space for football.
Built for the 2007 Pan American Games, the stadium was awarded to Botafogo shortly after and one of the conditions of the contract was the maintenance of the place for athletics events. There’s nothing wrong with that. The London Olympic Stadium was due to be dismantled after the 2012 games, but was awarded to West Ham on the condition that the athletics track was not destroyed.
Since then, the place has often hosted athletics competitions in an important calendar for Great Britain to win in athletics, until yesterday morning, a gold, four silver and two bronze medals in the Paris games. It seems little close to the 11 gold, 10 silver and eight bronze medals of the United States team. But it is already much better than the lone bronze medal won by Brazilian Alisson Santos, in Paris. Brazil’s performance can and will improve! But this depends, first and foremost, on the path to the podium requiring a walk that doesn’t always happen in front of TV cameras — but that fills every Brazilian with pride when they see the flag go up and the anthem is played for the whole world to hear.
