When Brazilian Daniel Dias looks in the mirror he does not just see a young man missing his hands and one leg, but a multiple champion swimmer helping to turn his nation into a Paralympic powerhouse.
Brazil might be struggling on the soccer field and not exactly first rank in most Olympic sports, but one year before it becomes the first South American nation to host the Summer Games, it is emerging as one to watch in the Paralympics.
Brazil finished in seventh place in the London 2012 Olympics and now hopes to break into the top five when Rio de Janeiro holds the Paralympics, starting on Sept. 7 next year.
Photo: AP
Generous funding for the Paralympians appears to be paying off. Things are harder with the Olympic team, which hopes to get into the top-10 medal rankings, itself a huge improvement from 22nd place in London.
“We have a generation of athletes who are absolute winners and who come from London or after London and are already world champions and record holders,” Brazilian Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons said.
Dias, Brazil’s best Paralympic swimmer, is a leading example.
At 28 years old, he has 15 Paralympic medals, including 10 golds, and several records. Six of those golds came in the London Olympics.
“Sport changed my life, the way I saw and accepted my disability,” he said. “I understood that disabilities are inside all of us, that it is not a physical thing, because everyone has some kind of disability,” he said.
The world of Paralympics “does not have the superstars of individual sports like Usain Bolt and Michael Phelps,” which helps Brazil make their mark, said Michel Castellar, editor of the Rio Olimpico blog in the daily Extra.
Despite preparing to host the two sets of Summer Games, Brazil’s own teams lack a state-of-the-art training center. They are building one for both types of Olympics — but only for after the games.
However, that has affected the Olympic teams more than the less sophisticated Paralympic athletes.
The Paralympics sector in Brazil is unusually well funded thanks to a 2001 law which gives 2 percent of lottery proceeds — rising to 2.7 percent next year — to the Olympic and Paralympic committees.
When it comes to spending that money, the Paralympic Committee gets an advantage over its Olympic brethren: direct control over two of the biggest sectors, swimming and athletics.
Usually these would be controlled by their separate federations, but with direct control, the Paralympic committee has been able to decide better how to make investments.
Funding the Paralympic teams has paid off handsomely: Brazil rose from 24th place to seventh in the medal haul in 12 years.
Before the law was approved, Brazil’s Paralympians got 22 medals in the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Four years later, they won 33 medals in Athens, then 47 in 2008 in Beijing. In London, the haul was 43 medals, including a record 21 golds.
Next year, the committee is to have considerably more funds, with the budget rising from about US$23 million last year to US$45 million.
“These resources will help increase preparation of the Paralympic program,” Parsons said.
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