Opinion – Renata Mendonça: Fred’s emotion shows that idols are rare, but they exist

I’m not a Fluminense fan, but I’ve seen, reviewed and even cried with the images of the 199th goal scored by Fred with the tricolor shirt at Maracanã last Saturday. The way the expression on his face goes from the explosion of joy to the genuine tears of emotion that that moment represented is the synthesis of what we look for in an idol of any sport: connection.

The image we saw at Maracanã on Saturday was as beautiful as it is rare today. It will seem nostalgic to say that “they don’t make idols like they used to”, but the truth is that they don’t. First because, in Brazil, our idolatry seems to be almost restricted to football. We don’t have eyes for other sports and we are always looking for today’s players to live up to the expectations created by past idols.

Last week, Ana Marcela Cunha, super champion of the aquatic marathon, raised this discussion and made me reflect. After winning her third medal in this edition of the World Cup (she was gold in the 5 km and 25 km and bronze in the 10 km), she stated that Brazil is a country “lacking idols” and that it often forgets to look at Olympic sports. in building your references.

“Until the other day, I was seeing people on social media comparing me to Pele, to Senna, and I was talking to my girlfriend the other day: I don’t want to be compared to anyone, I just want to write my story,” he said in an interview with SportTV.

“Our country lacks idols, we see everything ‘football, football, football’. And there are other sports, there are Olympic sports, there are sports that need help, so that’s it, we make our own history. “

I would bet that many Brazilians here don’t know who Ana Marcela Cunha is, one of the greatest athletes in the history of the sport here. She has 15 medals at Worlds. She competed in her first Olympic edition in 2008, aged 16, when she won fifth place. In 2021, exactly 13 years later, she finally won her first medal – and then a gold. At 30 years old, she remains hegemonic in the sport and has never gone through a water sports World Cup since 2010 without winning at least one medal.

A career as successful as this should be enough for Ana Marcela to be an absolute idol of our sport. But her story, unfortunately, is hardly told.

If we tried to establish criteria (although I must admit that these are very subjective) for the formation of an idol in any sport, maybe we could reach two points in common: 1) relevant titles/achievements in the modality; 2) time at the top. There is still a third one, which is a little relative, but I consider it important to separate winning athletes from true idols: the way in which they manage to be a reference beyond the achievements they have achieved in sport.

There is no doubt that Ana Marcela meets the first two requirements with leftovers. And the third… Well, maybe if we talked more about her, we could make her a much bigger reference for girls who, many times, still don’t see sport as “their” place.

What makes an idol is also the way we tell their story. In fact, the least we need to do is count it.

The image of children who probably saw little of Fred’s heyday playing for Fluminense (between 2009 and 2012) getting emotional with him in the stadium shows the importance of building references in the sport.

And in that case, there need be no competition. Football is the most popular sport in the world, and it’s only natural that our idolatry connections happen to it. But we can also value the achievements of other modalities. We need to grow with more referrals. References from other sports. Female references. Stories like that of Ana Marcela Cunha need to be told.