While Tite, Neymar and company are in Qatar, another Brazilian team will have their own World Cup ahead of them in the coming days (and playing at home). Starting next Monday (5), the Barra da Tijuca Olympic Park, in the west zone of Rio de Janeiro, will host the Paralympic Bocce World Championship, a modality practiced by athletes with severe physical and motor disabilities. The event will be broadcast by National Association of Sports for the Disabled (Ande) YouTube channelLive.
The competition will bring together more than 170 players from 40 countries, in addition to Brazil. This is the main boules event in the Paralympic cycle of the Paris Games (France), in addition to being the first World Championship with the division of athletes by gender in individual disputesa change that came into effect after the Tokyo Paralympics (Japan).
Until 2021, the separation was made only by functional categories, which are four. Classes BC1 and BC2 bring together athletes who play with their hands or feet. The difference is that in BC1 an assistant is allowed to deliver the balls. In BC3 players have the support of a chute to direct the pitches, being able to use instruments to push the sphere. In BC4, finally, are the competitors with spinal cord injury.
“We expect to win five medals, two of them in the final. [ouro ou prata]?? It is the only competition in the period [entre as Paralimpíadas de Tóquio e Paris] where all the best in the world will be, so [o Mundial] it will be a beacon, a parameter for what will happen in 2024”, said Ande’s technical director, Leonardo Baideck, through the entity’s press office.
Brazil will have 11 athletes at the World Cup, competing in the four classes, and in three of them it will be present in both suits. The exception is BC2, in which the country will not be represented among women. BC3, in turn, is the category with the most players: Evani Calado and Evelyn Oliveira in the female, Antonio Leme and Mateus Carvalho in the male.
The Brazilian team wants to return to the top of the podium at the event, which it has not occupied since the edition in Lisbon (Portugal), in 2010. Dirceu Pinto (deceased two years ago and honored by the World Cup mascot, called Dibu) he was individual champion in BC4 and was part of the winning team in the class pair disputes alongside Adriano Andrade Silva and Eliseu dos Santos. They were the only times Brazil won gold medals in the competition.
Eliseu, by the way, is one of the veterans of the Brazilian squad, which has Maciel Santos as the most experienced, on his way to his seventh appearance. BC2 Paralympic champion at the London Games (United Kingdom) in 2012, the athlete was on the podium of the World Cup twice in Beijing (China), eight years ago. On the occasion, he took bronze in the individual and silver in the team dispute that mixed classes BC1 and BC2, with José Carlos Chagas, Daniela Falótico and Luiz Carlos.
ongoing renovation
Maciel, 37 years old and who was at the first time the World Cup took place in Rio, in 2006, arrives at this year’s edition as the leader of the BC2 world ranking among men and will have a young Brazilian as one of his opponents in the fight for the title unprecedented. At the age of 21, ten of them practicing bocce, Iuri Tauan is one of the debutants of the delegation and started to represent Brazil in international competitions last year.
“My expectations are as high as possible. I hope to do well at the World Cup, represent Brazil very well and take the medal home”, said the young man from Rio Grande do Norte. Brazil Agency??
Iuri even has Maciel as a reference and even trained with him for a week in Mogi das Cruzes (SP), where the Paralympic champion lives. Together, they were BC1 and BC2 team champions in the Bocce America Cup held at the Paralympic Training Center in São Paulo in December 2021. In the individual dispute Maciel won gold and Iuri took bronze.
“I’m taking the competitions I’ve been to with him [Maciel] as baggage of experience. I’m going to put together everything I’ve learned and do my best to win the gold medal at this Worlds”, projected the athlete born in Parnamirim (RN) and currently in 12th place in the world ranking of the category.
Who was alongside Maciel and Iuri in winning the Copa América by team was Andreza Vitória, another bocce promise. The woman from Pernambuco was diagnosed, at the age of two, with Leigh Syndrome, a hereditary neurodegenerative disease that affects the nervous system. At the age of 21, she has defended Brazil since 2018 and represented the country at the Tokyo Games.
The Rio World Cup will be the first of the young woman’s career, who arrives at the tournament as the leader of the BC1 women’s ranking. In addition to her, only Maciel, among the 11 Brazilians, is at the top of some class. Of the other nine, four are in the top-10: José Carlos Chagas (second in BC1), Mateus Carvalho (fifth in BC3), Evelyn Oliveira and Evani Calado (third and sixth, respectively, in BC4).
??[A liderança] It’s a seven-year set of work that has been paying off. I am very proud of my results together with my coaches, of having reached this position in the ranking. I hope to have a good competition and I know that I am prepared to perform at my best”, highlighted Andreza, who until 2017 competed in the BC2 class, being reclassified to BC1 the following year, starting to have the direct help of coach Poliana Cruz.
In addition to being partners in the BC1 and BC2 team competition, Iuri and Andreza are at the head of a new generation of the sport, which has been fostered since the School Paralympics. Including the pair, there are four Brazilian athletes at the World Cup who were in the main tournament for young people with disabilities of school age. The other two are Letícia Karoline (BC1) and Mateus Carvalho (the latter being the most experienced among them).
“Any high-yield project, no matter how successful it may be, needs an eye toward renovation. We are working on the Los Angeles Games [Estados Unidos, em 2028] and, later on, Brisbane [Austrália, em 2032]?? It’s not because there are gold medalists [na equipe] who will wait for the result to be bad to renew. We highly value the School Paralympics, the campsites [que reúnem os destaques das Paralimpíadas Escolares]the selection of young people, which is a project that we started in 2022, [Campeonatos] Brazilians, Parapan American Games and the Youth World Cup. If we want to stay on top of the wave, we have to think about a process of maturation for these athletes”, concluded Baideck, from Ande.
