In Brazil, the gold has a genre and race. Beatriz Souza and Rebeca Andrade were the first athletes to win gold medals for the country in the Paris Olympics in judo and the gymnastics individual floor final, respectively. Both are female Black athletes from poor families and benefited from the Athletic Grants Program, launched by the Lula government in 2004.
Like them, the other Olympic medalists for Brazil also accessed the program at some point. Gabriel Medina, from surfing, and Larissa Pimenta, from judo, are the only athletes not currently benefiting from the program.
Ellen Scherrer, mentor of the page Black Feminism in Sport and researcher at the State University of Campinas (Unicamp, in Portuguese), stresses the social aspect of sports development in Brazil.
“If we think about the Black athletes with medals, such as Rebeca and Bia, they are both Black women who participated in social projects. Brazil still lacks public policies and financing for sports,” she said.
In addition to the social compound of practicing sports in Brazil, the markers of race and gender stand out. Ellen points out that the two gold medals so far in the Paris Olympics are historic and recalls that, for almost 40 years, women were banned from practicing various sports in Brazil.
“We have difficulties to include and accept women, which has consequences to this day. Brazil also is a country where racist violence is on the agenda every day. The gold medals Rebeca Andrade and Beatriz Souza won have broken walls and showed the power of the Brazilian Black people,” Scherrer states.
Inspiration
For many years, Black women didn’t compete in artistic gymnastics in Brazil. It changed with Daiane dos Santos, the first Black woman to stand out in the sport and get a gold medal at the World Artistic Gymnastics Championships in 2003.
Olívia Pilar, a writer and doctoral student in communication at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG, in Portuguese), emphasized that as soon as a Black woman shows that it is possible, a world of possibilities opens up.
"Not only is it representative, but it also creates new perspectives on what it means to be a Black woman. So, even if Daiane dos Santos hadn't been a reference for Rebeca Andrade, she would have already changed people’s imagination. Rebeca Andrade is making the same journey now, and with a worldwide reach," she comments.
Olívia highlights that, in addition to investments, Black athletes need opportunities and that people believe in them.
"Viola Davis said, when she received Best Actress at the Emmy Awards, that the only thing separating Black women from other people is opportunity. That's one way of putting it because it's very important and significant that Brazil's first two gold medals at the 2024 Olympic Games came from Black women. They showed that talent has always existed, but investment is needed," concludes the writer.
