The Angolan Antonio Van-Dunem has risen to fame in the FIBA windows to the applause of the public and the astonished gaze of the other basketball players. He, however, does not belong to any of the great teams; nor of the small ones, everything is said. He has not scored a triple from the other end of the field, nor was he surprised with an impressive dunk, nor with an alley oop. He hasn’t even touched the ball. And yet he is the viral star of the moment.
As he likes to say, he is “the eleventh player on the basketball court”: the person who wipes the mop to clean the floor of the players’ sweat, but in his hands the mop becomes much more, showing us how any job can rise to Olympic status if done with passion.
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Antonio Van-Dunem, who is a dancer by trade and has 43 years, has been cleaning the floor of the African courts for more than two decades and has always done it that way: with cartwheels, jumps, pirouettes, claps on the court and a lot of flow. In Angola they know him as ‘Toy Limpia Chao’ (the boy with the Mop) and they celebrate each of his appearances. And it is that for Van-Dunem his work is not limited to cleaning the floor:
The show that I put on is to cheer up and turn on the fans. Most people think I’m here to clean the floor, but I’m not. My real rival is the floor of the pavilions.
Van-Dunem has now risen to fame during matches in Angola, in the knockout phase for the 2023 World Cup qualifications on the African continent. Stars like Brand Davies, the FC Barcelona pivot who also plays for Uganda, were playing there, but Van-Dunem has stood out above all of them.
The videos of his performance made by the fans have made him so viral that the International Basketball Federation wanted to know a little better about this man, who is sweeping the field. Why does it do what it does?
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“I noticed that the pavilion fans were getting bored,” admitted the newfound basketball star, “and I thought it was the best way to keep them involved and interact with them.”
Van-Dunem loves his job. He does it with pride and his children are his biggest fans. “If I have the opportunity, I would like to be in a World Cup or an NBA game. I would be the happiest person in the world. I love to mop.”
Not only should he be there at the World Cup, but Van-Dunem deserves MVP at the very least.
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