Zeferina will retire at São Silvestre 21 years after a historic feat

Marathon runner Maria Zeferina Baldaia, 50, still has a fresh memory of each of the names she has been called over the last three decades.

Maria, for the closest ones, and Maria Zeferina or Baldaia, for a large part of the runners with whom he competed.

Pezinho, by first coach Antenor Augusto Cruz, Pezão, who affectionately gave him the nickname for running barefoot at the beginning, and Tata, by his son Michael Jordan, raised closer to his grandmother due to the sacrifices Zeferina had to make in her career.

“There’s still the sugarcane girl, the cold-weather worker, the sugarcane worker… and I’m all of that, with great pride. That’s my story,” said the athlete to Sheet.

And not a single day goes by that she doesn’t also remember December 31, 2001. The date made her the third Brazilian to win São Silvestre —after Carmen de Oliveira, in 1995, and Roseli Machado, in 1996— and changed her once your life.

This Saturday (31) Zeferina says goodbye to professional competitions precisely in the place that catapulted her nationally in her career and made known each of the pages of her history. The São Silvestre International Race, in São Paulo, will be broadcast from 7:30 am on TV Globo.

“Fifty-two minutes and twelve seconds,” she recalls, the exact time she finished the race that year.

“Now it’s not enough, right? We’re talking to try between 1:10, 1:15… I have a goal, of course, but emotion speaks loudly because I remember what happened in each kilometer. The last one I did, in Belo Horizonte, I didn’t know whether to run or cry”, he completes.

There is definitely no way for Zeferina to forget the almost umbilical relationship with the race in São Paulo.

Every day, she looks at the trophy won in her living room and heads to the training center that bears her name, in Jardim Europa, in Sertãozinho, inaugurated with an investment of around R$ 4 million two years and seven months after the done.

“Maria Zeferina Baldaia Olympic Center. It hasn’t dawned on me, it seems I’m still dreaming. I’ll cross the finish line full of gratitude to God. If I could go back, I’d do it all over again”, he says.

The 15 km race, marked by a spectacular sprint over Kenyan Margaret Okayo, leader for most of the route and favorite at the time, on the ascent of Avenida Brigadeiro Luís Antônio, was not by far the only achievement of her career.

In the same year, months before, he had already won the Volta Internacional da Pampulha, in Belo Horizonte. In 2000, he surprised by winning the Curitiba International Marathon starting with amateur runners —200m away from the elite group.

He also won the Corrida dos Reis, in Cuiabá, the Half Marathon in Rio de Janeiro and the International Marathon in São Paulo.

Even so, there were only two sponsorships: one from the sports brand Mizuno, which supplied him with materials between 2001 and 2007, and the other from Usina Santa Elisa, in Sertãozinho, from 2001 to 2005.

“I don’t complain about anything. I always say that God believed in me, everything was at the right time and perfect.

Born in Nova Módica, in the interior of Minas Gerais, the athlete moved with her family to Sertãozinho during her childhood. She started running around age 12, in jeans and barefoot — and only on weekends.

During the other days, he helped his parents on a daily basis in the cotton and peanut plantations to support the family of nine brothers — one of them, Fabiano, with cerebral palsy. He still worked in the cane fields.

“For more than ten years I only ran for the sake of running. I didn’t know the time, I didn’t know anything. Rice was only on payday. Crackers and yogurt? We never had it. But we were always happy”, he recalls.

He won the first pair of sneakers at the expense of many blisters on his feet while running on dirt roads, full of stones, after a test in Poços de Caldas. She also overcame other setbacks and setbacks by working as a street sweeper, nanny and cleaning lady.

“I would hitchhike or run to Ribeirão [Preto, interior de São Paulo] to train, had no track. He still heard that he was from the slave quarters, that he wasn’t going to be anyone. I never hit back, I just played inside to strengthen myself”.

In the first big race she won, in Curitiba, Zeferina paid for the competition with the money she had received from her job dismissal.

She says that she arrived early to guarantee a place among the crowd of amateur runners and was informed already close to km 30, when pairing with the athlete Ilda Alves dos Santos, who were together in the lead of the competition.

“I didn’t see the elite group and I didn’t understand why, I thought I was way behind. When I got there, I asked and I was scared”, he reports.

She left behind her opponent and even Marizete de Paula Rezende, both favorites. Afterwards, she provoked laughter when she left hugging the huge symbolic check of R$ 10,000 given to the winner.

“I ran to the accommodation with him. I didn’t know he had a real one, I had never won so much money in my life”, he says.

At São Silvestre, where he also won, the tactic adopted by the coach at the time was simple: “Run across the nape of the one in red [Margaret Okayo]”. The Kenyan had just won the New York marathon and wore clothes of this color.

The plan worked, just like the retirement plan, which she has already matured since 2020. It was only postponed by the coronavirus pandemic.

The athlete will even become a movie in 2024, in the production of directors Samuel Prisco and Lucas Bretas.

The project will soon start the fundraising phase and will count from its origins in Minas Gerais, with testimonials from the most relevant opponents, one of them Okayo itself.

Zeferina puts an end to the victorious and overcoming cycle marked by São Silvestre, but she knows that she will also have a lot to remember from December 31, 2022 onwards.