China’s Lin Yue and Chen Aisen won gold in men’s 10 metre synchronized diving at the Rio Games on Monday (August 8), keeping alive the country’s goal of a clean sweep in all eight events.
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But on Monday, in Rio de Janeiro, they chanted her name.
It’s also where Brazilian judoka Rafaela Silva is from.
Silva cried as she ran off the mat to embrace her coaches, then climbed into the stands where she was enveloped by family, friends, and fans.
The gold medal marks a fairytale rise to Olympic triumph from a childhood in Rio’s notorious “City of God” favela for Silva. She crushed her own world record in the 400 freestyle Sunday night, touching almost 5 seconds ahead of her closest pursuer.
Her next match was against the No. 2 seed in the tournament, South Korea’s Kim Jan-Di. At the 2012 London Games, Silva was disqualified for an illegal leg grab during a fight against Hedvig Karakas of Hungary. With neither judoka able to get a score in regulation, it went to a golden score period. In fact, at one point, the referee briefly awarded a waza-ari to Silva before it came off the board. After three minutes of the golden score period, Silva executed a ideal counterattack on Caprioriu.
Fighting against Mongolia’s top-ranked Sumiya Dorjsuren, Silva flipped Dorjsuren just over a minute into the contest.
Silva is a native of the largest favela in Brazil and an easy character for the home crowd to rally behind.
There is a particular poignancy to Ms. Silva’s victory at this moment, when Brazil is in the grip of twin economic and political crises that threaten to reverse the significant progress the country has made in the past 12 years on reducing social inequalities. Rafaela Silva ironed most of the pain the Brazilian judo team had suffered so far this week. But they ended the first two days without a medal despite the initial optimism. Seeing someone like me who left the City of God, who started judo at five years of age as a joke.
Brazil’s Rafaela Silva in blue competes with Mongolia’s Sumiya Dorjsuren for the gold medal.
Silva had been expected to win a medal in London and after the devastation of her exit she was attacked on social media with racist taunts.
“Japanese judo has a mission to win gold”, Ono said.
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Later on Tuesday, Phelps looks to win gold medal No. 20 when he swims in the 200-meter butterfly against South African Chad le Clos, who beat Phelps in London; the USA women’s gymnastics team goes for gold in the team competition; and Lochte is set to make his Rio debut in the preliminaries of the men’s 4×200-meter relay.
