Brazilian athletes drop Olympic dreams to help flood victims
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Brazilian pre-Olympic rower Piedro Tuchtenhagen after loading a boat used to rescue flood victims in Porto Alegre on May 10.
PHOTO: REUTERS
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PORTO ALEGRE – Less than three months from the Olympic Games in Paris, some Brazilian athletes from the devastated state of Rio Grande do Sul are giving up their dreams to compete on the global sporting stage for a good cause.
They are staying at home to help with the rescue of victims of the severe floods.
Rowers Evaldo Becker and Piedro Tuchtenhagen, due to compete in the qualifying phase for the Olympic Games in the lightweight double sculls category, decided to drop their sporting quest and join volunteers saving stranded neighbours, finding them shelter and distributing aid.
“I said: ‘Piedro, I can’t do it any more’,” Becker told Reuters by telephone.
Tuchtenhagen added: “The Olympics are the dream of our lives, but today we cannot see ourselves leaving our state.”
Their training was disrupted by the floods that inundated the streets of state capital Porto Alegre in late April, after the river Guaiba burst its bank. So they began helping to distribute donations and rescue families and their pets.
“I didn’t even think twice. It was my last chance to get to the Olympics. I was excited. But the flood waters took my dream away just as it took lives,” Becker said.
Swimmer Viviane Jungblut, who already qualified for the open water race, also dropped out and said on social media she would put her efforts into the rescue and recovery operations.
World and Olympic surfing champion Italo Ferreira went to Rio Grande do Sul to help in the rescue efforts. The coach of the Brazil Olympic men’s judo team, Antonio Carlos Kiko Pereira, also joined in rescue work.
The athletes stayed in Rio Grande do Sul, even as the Brazilian Olympic Committee devised a plan to evacuate them from the state to train elsewhere in Brazil for the qualifiers.
Former Olympic athletes also volunteered to help.
Gymnast Daiane dos Santos, who competed in three Olympics, and former Olympic swimmer Nicholas Santos, who holds the world record for the 50m butterfly, joined the rescue operations.
The unprecedented floods in Rio Grande do Sul have left a toll of 113 dead and displaced more than 300,000 from their homes, civil defence said. REUTERS
