The Brazilian delegation that will participate in the Paralympic Swimming World Championship is already on Madeira Island, in Portugal, to compete in the competition. Brazil sent a delegation of 29 athletes to Portugal, all of them members of the Bolsa Atleta, a direct sponsorship program run by the Special Secretariat for Sport of the Ministry of Citizenship.
Of the 29 summoned, 26 belong to the Podium category, the main one of the program, aimed at athletes who qualify among the top 20 of the ranking world. The world will be attended by more than 600 athletes from 70 countries. It is the first major event of the modality in the cycle for the Paralympic Games in Paris, France, in 2024.
This world, by the way, will be the first without the multi-champion Daniel Dias. He retired from the Tokyo Paralympic Games, leaving in history a resume of 40 podiums in worlds (31 golds) and 27 in Paralympics, 14 golds. But Brazil arrives in Portugal with a new generation of male and female athletes.
One of the recent examples is Gabriel Araújo, 20 years old, appointed by the organizers of the event as one of the potential stars of the competition. With two golds (50m and 200m freestyle) and a silver won in his debut at the Paralympic Games, in Tokyo 2021, Gabriel is considered one of the favorites of Class S2, both for his technical performance and for his charisma, one of the athlete’s characteristics.
According to the Brazilian Paralympic Committee (CPB), 35% of the athletes of the national delegation are under 23 years old, which indicates a qualified and consistent renewal, since the indexes required to guarantee a place in the selection take into account the real possibility of the athletes reach the finals in their tests.
