Meet the Brazilians who will compete in the Beijing Winter Games

The COB (Brazilian Olympic Committee) announced this Monday (17) the delegation of ten athletes who will represent Brazil at the Beijing 2022 Winter Games.

The total number of names announced reaches 11, but one of the five members of the bosbled team is registered as a reserve. That’s why the official account is ten Brazilians in the Chinese Olympics, a number lower than the record of 13 representatives in the Sochi-2014 edition.

The country will have athletes in five sports: cross-country skiing, freestyle skiing, alpine skiing, bobsled and skeleton.

The delegation’s main bet is on a new sport for Brazil, skeleton. In recent months, Nicole Silveira has achieved relevant results, such as the Copa América title, eighth place in the Games’ test event and ninth place in a World Cup stage.

The goal of the Gaucho for Beijing-2022 is to appear in the top 10, a result that would be historic. The country’s best performance at the Winter Games was Isabel Clark’s ninth place in snowboarding in 2006.

Nicole and skiers Manex Silva, Bruna Moura and Sabrina Cass are newcomers to the Games. If there is a reallocation of spaces, two more Brazilians can benefit: Marina Tuono in monobob (individual form of bobsled) and Augustinho Teixeira in snowboard.

The Beijing Olympics have the opening ceremony scheduled for February 4th and run until the 20th.

Meet the Brazilian delegation

Skeleton

Nicole Silveira, 27, has had a fast rise in skeleton since 2018, when she started practicing the sport. Before that, she, who is also a nurse, had a career of just one season in bobsled. A resident of Canada since the age of seven, the gaucho from Rio Grande has already practiced dance, artistic gymnastics, volleyball, soccer, bodybuilding and weight lifting before finding herself on the ice rink.

In skeleton, the objective is to go through a course with sharp and fast curves in the shortest possible time. The sled, which can reach 140 km/h, resembles a roller cart with blades, on which the athlete launches himself face down.

It will be Brazil’s first participation in this sport in an edition of the Games.

When you compete: the women’s skeleton will be played on February 11th and 12th

Bobsled​

Brazil will participate for the fifth time (it was also in 2002, 2006, 2014 and 2018) in the sport that, like skeleton, consists of going down ice tracks on a sled at high speed. In this case, a larger sled. The country will compete in two modalities, 2-man and 4-man.

Edson Bindilatti was in the four previous editions. He is the sled driver and will be present both in the duo, with Edson Martins, 32, and in the quartet, alongside Rafael Souza, 25, and Erick Vianna, 28. Jefferson Sabino, 39, who played in the Beijing Games in 2008 in the triple jump, travels as a reserve.

The Brazilian team recently had to overcome the loss of Odirlei Pessoni, who competed in bobsled in Sochi-2014 and PyeongChang-2018. Pessoni died in a motorcycle accident in March 2021. During the qualifying stages for the Games, a photo of him was taken by colleagues in the helmet and on the sled.

“When we started, we didn’t know what to do, we had a lot of support from other teams, from foreign coaches. Today, we arrived much more mature. The expectation is to reach the final. There are 28 teams in the 4-man and 30 in the 2- man. We want to be in the top 20,” said Bindilatti.

The 42-year-old from Bahia, who, like his teammates, started in athletics, said that this will be his last Olympic participation as an athlete.

When they compete: the bobsled will be played from February 14th to 20th, first with the doubles and then with the quartet

cross country skiing

Jaqueline Mourão, 46, will participate in no less than her eighth edition of the Olympic Games, the winter fifth (after 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018), which adds to three in mountain bike cycling (2004, 2008 and 2020) . She will be isolated with the Brazilian record for participation in the mega event, surpassing the seven of Robert Scheidt, Formiga and Rodrigo Pessoa.

The veteran will compete in cross-country skiing, a long-distance modality, as will newcomer Bruna Moura, 27, who had Jaqueline as her mentor in both cycling and skiing.

Bruna’s trajectory on the bike was shortened after she discovered a heart problem. When he was able to have surgery and returned to the sport, he returned to wheel skiing, before migrating to the snow.

The tests in which they will participate are not yet defined, but there are chances to compete in an unprecedented way in the doubles dispute.

Another newcomer to the Games will be the Hispanic-Brazilian Manex Silva, 19, who will enter all the individual events. Born in Acre, he has a Spanish father and a Brazilian mother and has lived in Europe since childhood. He got to know skiing by living near the Pyrenees and got support to compete for Brazil. Manex participated in the 2020 Winter Youth Olympic Games and was the best South American.

When they compete: the cross-country ski program runs from the 5th to the 20th of February

freestyle skiing

Another young Olympic debutant will be Sabrina Cass, 19. She is the daughter of a Brazilian mother and was born in the United States. She grew up skiing in Park City (host of the Salt Lake City-2002 Winter Games) and was World Youth Champion in 2019, as the US Representative. He started to defend Brazil about six months ago.

“When I was on the US team, I felt like I was skiing more for other people than myself,” Sabrina told Olympics.com. “It was a difficult decision, but one that I am very happy to have made.”

Her event is the moguls (descent from the mountain with undulations, in which the athlete performs acrobatics), considered one of the noblest of skiing and in which Brazil will make its debut in the Games.

When you compete: Sabrina debuts even before the opening ceremony on February 3; the moguls finals will be on the 6th

Alpine Esqui

Michel Macedo, from Ceará, moved with his family to the United States at the age of three and began training and competing in skiing at an early age. At 18 years old, he needed to choose a country to represent and chose Brazil.

His Olympic debut was in 2018, but he was unable to finish the race because of an injury. He will return to the Games more experienced, at 23, in search of a good result.

In alpine skiing, athletes slide down a mountain along a course with winding turns and jumps. Michel competes in the slalom and giant slalom events, in which the competitor has to go through doors during the course.

When you compete: Michel’s tests will be on the 13th and 16th of February