Almost no one doubts that Brazilian Rebeca Andrade (25 years old, 155 centimetres, 45 kilos) would be the planetary queen of artistic gymnastics if she were not contemporary with the extraordinary Simone Biles, 27. The American enthroned her one day as the ideal rival with the gesture of placing a crown on her and now she has verbalised it in Paris, in her triumphant return to the Olympic Games: “I think Rebecca pushes me to give my best. She is a phenomenal athlete and gymnast. So I am glad she was there to push me.” Adversaries who exchange mutual praise. The trajectory that has led the Brazilian to win six Olympic medals (two in Tokyo and four in Paris, more than any other compatriot) began with a series of coincidences and coincidences that led her, at the age of four, to debut in a sport then dominated by skeletal white teenagers.
She ended up in a gym because Rosa Santos, the mother of the athlete, of six other children and head of the family, had the same problem as millions of domestic workers in Brazil who get up at dawn to get to work after one, two or three hours on the bus. She had no one to leave her children with while she looked after the offspring and the homes of other families far from the modest family home in Guarulhos, a city 25 kilometres from São Paulo that is now, for Brazilians, the birthplace of Andrade as well as housing and giving its name to the international airport.
Little Rebeca was a whirlwind, one of those kids who never stops for a minute. She learned to jump by climbing onto the bunk beds in her room. “Since she was little, she was always very mischievous, she did everything by jumping, but I didn’t have much idea of how things worked, or where a gym was,” her mother said in 2021, after the two medals she won at the Tokyo Games.
It turns out that an aunt of hers, a civil servant, was sent to a municipal gymnasium in Guarulhos to replace a cook. She took her daughters and her niece, who loved to dance. The idea was for her to release her infinite energy there. Her talent soon became evident in this social program for initiation into gymnastics, which offers a range of sports, has thousands of students and is one of the breeding grounds for Brazilian gymnastics.
Her prowess on the apparatus earned her comparisons to Daiane dos Santos, the world champion who paved the way for Brazilian gymnasts. The Andrade girl’s school schedule was adapted to her training. The Andrade family supported her despite their financial difficulties, but sometimes she had to stop training due to lack of money. Travelling, as always in the outskirts of large Brazilian cities, was a challenge. Until her older brother got a bike, they made the long journey to practice on foot.
Within a year and a half, the girl was in a high-performance group. And at ten, things got even more serious. Jumps and pirouettes were no longer just a hobby. To fully dedicate herself to training, she moved to Curitiba, 440 kilometers south of Guarulhos. The athlete said that not seeing her mother and siblings was painful, but not so traumatic because in Guarulhos she already lived with a monitor during the week.
She began a sporting career that has led her to win two more medals in Paris (silver in the individual all-around and bronze in the team competition), to become a two-time world champion in the vault (2021, 2023) and to become an individual world champion in 2022. As soon as she could, she bought an apartment for her family in Guarulhos.
She made her Olympic debut at 17, in her homeland, in Rio de Janeiro. And although she left the country, she was already being hailed as one of the best gymnasts in the world. She even received praise from the great Biles.
The most critical moment of her professional career was probably the rupture of the anterior cruciate ligament in her right knee, which took her to the operating room three times to reconstruct it and kept her out of competition for a long season.
The biggest unforeseen event of recent times – the Covid-19 pandemic – gave her the opportunity to compete in her second Games. Thanks to the coronavirus and the postponement of the Olympic event, she had the necessary time to fully recover from her injuries and arrive at Tokyo 2021 in optimal shape. Without a doubt, the absence of Biles, who retired to take care of her mental health, gave her an invaluable opportunity to succeed and shine like never before. Encouraged by one of her therapists, she is studying Psychology.
The two medals in Tokyo (gold in the vault, silver in the individual all-around), together with the lack of titles for the national football teams, made her from then on the undisputed heroine of Brazilian sport. Let her choose topics funkfrom the favelas, Beyonce or Anitta electrify their compatriots with their exercises.
Each of her triumphs is even more special for all those black girls who have grown up straightening their hair and hearing that their physical appearance was not suited to artistic gymnastics or classical ballet. Columnist Flavia Oliveira wrote in the newspaper this Thursday The Globe Andrade embodies “the dream of ancestors torn from Africa to face a cruel and uncertain destiny” in Brazil, a country they built with their forced labor.
Andrade said goodbye with a medal in the individual all-around event in Paris, the most grueling. She has her sights set on pacing herself and prolonging her career. She says that when she competes she doesn’t focus on Biles, the scoreboard or the points, she concentrates on herself.
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