A summer series of the European Micro of the Olympic Games: today Portugal

Continuing our series on the history of the Olympic Games in Europe. José-Manuel Lamarque receives Ana Navarro Pedro, Portuguese journalist, correspondent in Paris.

For this summer series It was the Olympic Games, From the European Micro dedicated to the Olympic Games, we head to Portugal with Ana Navarro Pedro, a Portuguese journalist and correspondent in Paris. Portugal was the thirteenth country to join the Olympic Committee in 1909.

It must be said that until the fall of the dictatorship in 1974, Portugal at the Olympic Games – which has done all the Olympic Games – was more about equestrianism, fencing and sailing. We must not forget that the country had won its first bronze medal in 1924, in equestrianism, in Paris, a century ago.

franceinfo: After the fall of the dictatorship, Portugal discovered athletics?

Ana Navarro Pedro: Let’s say that. There were already athletes competing in the world championships, the Olympic committee got involved, and the results would be there ten years later. In 1984, in Los Angeles, Carlos Lopes won the marathon. We are not a country of sprinters, we are a country of long-distance runners and I say that in general, not just for athletics… And there you have it, Lopes wins the Los Angeles marathon, we have a gold medal! It was our first gold medal…

1924, bronze medals…

We had a few bronze and silver medals afterwards, it was very symbolic, in 1974, the fall of the dictatorship, and the gold medal came 10 years later, with Carlos Lopes and athletics, which is called the sport of the poor, rightly or wrongly. Maybe because it requires fewer resources to practice it. Horse racing, you still have to have the means to maintain horses.

Carlos Lopez came from a very humble background?

He had started working under the dictatorship at the age of 10. However, there was sport in him, and his parents forbade him from being a footballer and fortunately, his parents forbade him because he thought he was not strong enough to play football. And he still managed to break into the race in Portugal. Then, through willpower and sacrifice, he became our Olympic champion.

What happened to Carlos Lopes?

He remains an important person in Portugal because he still had positions afterwards in the Olympic Committee, in Portuguese athletics.

And the second event is Seoul 88, is it the heroine Rosinha, little Rose, Rosa Mota?

Our Rosinha, our little Rose, 1m 57 and 46 kilos distributed over this small height. And gold medal in the marathon. It’s extraordinary. It’s the middle of the night in Portugal. With the time difference, everyone is standing in front of the TV, watching our Rosinha who is going to win and who thinks she can’t win. At the 38th kilometer, she had been leading the race for a while, and she couldn’t take it anymore.

She had her competitors on her heels, ready to pass her, because that’s where you pass. And then there’s her coach who’s at the 38th kilometer, who knows that’s where it’s going to happen and who shouts at her: “Rosinha, it’s now or never!”

“Now or never”…

And there you have it. And that gave her extraordinary courage, she went back, and she won with a very good time too. She also comes from a very modest background, extremely modest. Her parents told her when she was little: “Listen, you are very lucky, you can go to school.”

VYou know, under the dictatorship, studying, going to school, learning to read and write, was already reserved for the wealthiest. Because Salazar was suspicious of those who were literate – they could think if they knew how to read and write.

Did these two gold medals instill in the youth the hope of success?

Without a shadow of a doubt, and this is the great meaning that I think, escapes a little the Portuguese. Because Carlos Lopes said: “I started from nothing, and I managed to occupy the imagination of an entire people”. And he is right and he does not say it out of vanity. It is the truth. Before, under the dictatorship, one did not leave the social condition in which one was born. And they, they proved that one could do it. With gold…

Since we are in this Olympic period, are there any Portuguese hopes today?

Yes, a little more. In Tokyo we still had four or five medals, all at once. We are betting a lot on athletics obviously, and then swimming, judo. But no, we don’t have a name that will stand out. Except for those who have already been to Tokyo and who we will perhaps see in Paris again.