Brazilian para-swimming phenomenon Gabriel dos Santos Araujo won the gold medal in the 100m backstroke, in the S2 category, at the Paris Paralympic Games on Thursday, far ahead of his opponents.
To the cheers of the crowd, the 22-year-old para-swimmer completed the distance in 1 min 53 sec 67, ahead of Russian neutral Vladimir Danilenko (2:01.34) and Chilean Alberto Abarza Diaz (2:01.97). Gabriel dos Santos Araujo, nicknamed Gabrielzinho, took a comfortable lead from the start of the race and maintained it throughout the event.
“I dominated the race, I killed the match! I still can’t believe it. It was the perfect race, which crowned all my efforts. One out of three!“, he reacted to the Brazilian channel Sportv, he who is aiming for gold in two other events. “I worked hard for this and I did everything so that my silver medal (in the same event in Tokyo, editor’s note) turned into gold,” he added.
This star swimmer in his country is looking for a hat-trick in Paris (August 28-September 8), after winning two gold medals and a silver at the Tokyo Games three years ago. He is competing in the S2 category, reserved for people with a physical disability.
In this category, races may be between swimmers whose disabilities are of a very different nature, but for whom it is accepted that the performance capacity in the stroke considered is comparable. The lower the number, the greater the functional loss.
Gabriel dos Santos Araujo, who has more than 50,000 followers on Instagram, suffers from phocomelia, a malformation caused by the arrest of the development of one or more limbs during pregnancy. In his case, he has stumps at the level of the shoulders, his legs are atrophied, but he can walk on his two feet.
To swim, he undulates in the water like a dolphin, with pelvic movements. A technique developed during long training sessions six times a week, in the pool in Juiz de Fora, in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais (southeast).
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