Brazil is celebrating its first gold medal of Rio 2016 after judoka Rafaela Silva completed her rise from the “City of God” favela to the top of the Olympic podium.
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Rafaela, who was disqualified in the early rounds at 2012 London Olympics for a rule violation, defeated world number one Sumiya Dorjsuren of Mongolia by Waza-ari to claim the gold.
Silva, the country’s first female world champion in judo, won the 57-kilogram division of the Japanese martial art on Monday as the crowd chanted “Rafa” and waved the green and yellow Brazilian flags.
“I definitely wanted to improve on my last medal”, Malloy told TeamUSA.com.
American Lilly King won a trash-talking duel with Russian Yulia Efimova for the gold medal in the 100-meter breaststroke on Monday night, the US men’s basketball team surged after a slow start, beating Venezuela 113-69, and Serena Williams struggled before beating France’s Alize Cornet 7-6 (5), 6-2 in her bid for a second consecutive singles gold medal. They said I was an embarrassment, that judo wasn’t for me.
“If it wasn’t for judo I could still be hanging around in Cidade de Deus rather than be here”.
“I want to thank everyone who cheered for me”. In the women’s 100m breaststroke, Lilly King won the gold in an Olympic record time of 1:04.93 to take the gold.
The violent slums from where Silva emerged from were the subject of the Oscar-nominated film City of God.
“I was practising hard in Japan to get in good shape”, he said.
Brazilian actor Tais Araujo, who is an activist on racial equality, immediately took to social media to congratulate Ms. Silva, saying, “The Brazil I want for my children has your face”. “I’ve known Rafaela since she was six years old and we always knew she would manage to get to the Olympics”, he said jubilantly after her win.
“She deserves this. She is a unique warrior”. She even held back the emotions in the moments after she won, keeping an even temper to pay respect to Dorjsuren.
Silva with her new hardware.
But on Monday, she heard her name ring out from the crowd of Brazilian spectators, who beamed with pride at their new national treasure and Olympian gold medalist.
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Following early years of trouble that saw her getting into fights in the neighbourhood, Silva found some structure to her life through judo and went on to attend the Instituto Reacao, founded by Olympic bronze medallist Flavio Canto.
