First modification: 03/08/2021 – 05:54Last modification: 03/08/2021 – 05:53
Sao Paulo (AFP)
Boiling oil sprayed his head when he was a ten-month-old baby. That accident left him scars and, according to his relatives, an almost chronic shyness that he overcame thanks to sport is due to him. Between sprints and jumps, Brazilian Alison dos Santos is now an Olympic medalist.
The 21-year-old athlete from São Paulo bathed in bronze this Tuesday in Tokyo in his first participation in the Olympic Games, the glorious peak for a season in which, since May, he broke the South American record five times in the 400-meter hurdles, one of the highest level tests of the moment.
A phenomenon on the rise of world athletics, Dos Santos consolidated the strength shown in the semifinals, in which he broke the South American record with a time of 47.31 seconds, improving by three hundredths his own continental mark. A brand that would drop again in the final (46.72).
There, on the track of the Japanese capital, space was opened between heavyweights such as the Norwegian Karsten Warholm, who took the Olympic gold by beating the record (45.94), the American Rai Benjamin, silver with 46.17, and the Qatari Abderrahman Samba, fifth in the final.
The bronze decorating his neck is the cherry on a cake already decorated with first place in the Pan American Games in Lima and the 2019 South American Championship, in addition to obtaining the third best time of the current season.
And it is the prize for a slim and lanky man, two meters tall, who had a traumatic start to life.
– Domestic accident –
A domestic accident marked the path of Alison dos Santos, a native of Sao Joaquim da Barra, a municipality 318 kilometers from Sao Paulo. His grandmother cooked fish in a frying pan, the ten-month-old baby moved the device and the boiling oil fell on part of his head, arms and chest.
The matron, in an attempt to protect him, was also injured. Both were hospitalized for several months.
Since then, to protect themselves from the sun or hide the traces of misfortune, the runner often wears caps that hide the scar on the head, mistaken by many for early alopecia.
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“He was so shy because of the burn that he only came out with a cap. He was dying of shame,” says his first coach, Ana Fidélis, to the UOL Esporte portal.
Brazil almost lost a jewel of athletics because of that shyness. Alison was so withdrawn that he turned down the first invitations to hit the track, but the insistence of a childhood friend ended up bringing him closer to the sport.
In his first competition, at the Olympic Center in Sao Paulo, when he was still a teenager, he participated with a yellow cap that hid his seams, recalls Fidélis.
His successes and the passage of time were healing the wounds of an athlete who promises to bring more joy to Brazil in a discipline – 400 meters hurdles – in which until now he had not achieved medals.
“I improved and today I am Alison,” he said, smiling and proud, without a cap, in 2019, during the Pan American Games, recounting the domestic accident in detail and naturalness.
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Two years later, in Tokyo, he engraved his name in the annals of the Brazilian Olympic medal, the second most winning modality of the Latin American giant with 18 medals, only surpassed by judo (24, four gold) and tied with sailing (18 , seven golden).
© 2021 AFP
