Meet Lízian Simões, 17-year-old Bahian and Open Water World Cup champion

When talking about drowning, no good words come to mind. Anguish. Pain. Despair. Trauma. All experienced by a girl who, at the age of 10, drowned in the sea at Buraquinho beach. She managed to get out of the water and made a promise to herself: when she became a mother, she would not allow her children to go through what she went through. They would learn to swim and have the opportunity to swim that she didn’t have.

Years later, he did. What Vânia Simões didn’t know was that, what was supposed to be a matter of survival, would become the great passion of her daughter, Lízian – current champion of the Open Water World Cup in the Junior Women’s category.

The young girl discovered the world of water when she was still little, at just 1 year and 8 months old. Later, he also tried ballet, handball, capoeira and other sports, but his love was really swimming. And he discovered that he could combine the sport with the love he always had for competitiveness. After all, the Bahian woman liked the feeling that she depended solely on herself to overcome herself, swim against time and write her name alongside the greatest swimmers in history.

Obstinate, Lízian competed in her first competition at the age of 6, at the Hidro & Cia school, in Stella Maris, where she lived. Without knowing that she was being watched, she was discovered by a scout, who recommended her to CEPE, her first club.

So, when she was still little, she started training and made her first trip to a tournament, in Maceió. There, she had to compete with opponents who were 7 years old – one year older than her. But Lízian wasn’t scared. Having always been accustomed to water, she jumped into the pool and took off, beating all her rivals.

At the time of the podium, however, she wasn’t even called. The young woman was “swimming under observation”, as she was too young for the level of competition. It wasn’t anyone’s plan for her to win. But it was in hers.

“I have always taken competition very seriously. I hated losing. For me, second place was bad – until I valued second place. Today, I value it a lot, but when you’re little, you just want gold,” he said.

Under a rainy fog, something unusual for Salvador, she faced the open sea and expanded her world beyond the swimming pools. “I haven’t lost my fear. I thought: ‘I know I’m prepared, I know I have training for this’, and I went, really scared. And I did it.”

At the beginning of the following year, Lízian arrived at the Yacht Clube da Bahia and started swimming with Luis Rogério Lima Arapiraca. The coach decided that he would take her to the biggest competitions in the world. There, the two began training in water marathons weekly, preparing for an opportunity that came along the way.

2024 arrived. Every day, Lízian woke up at 4am and trained from 5am to 6am, before going to school, in the middle of the entrance exam year. After class, I would return home, have lunch and return to the Yacht to train. She didn’t even take a vacation. And, if it was an opportunity that the Bahian woman was looking for, that was exactly what came up.

At the age of 17, the swimmer entered the Olympic Preparation Program (PPO), which guides young athletes at the beginning of their careers towards the Olympic Games. There, the idea of ​​sending some swimmers from the base to compete in two stages of the Open Water World Cup came up. The objective was not to win, but to experience the championship. Lízian accepted the challenge.

The athlete reached the third stage of the tournament, in Setúbal, Portugal, without participating in the Egyptian and Italian editions. Swimming in the absolute – a circuit that ranks athletes together and then divides them into categories – and alongside the biggest stars of international swimming, the Bahian woman came first in Junior, proving herself as a new Brazilian talent to the world.

Next, the test would come in Hong Kong, China. And Lízian scored enough to reach the top of the general ranking in her category. Her impressive performance made the Brazilian Olympic Committee decide to send her to the final stage of the World Cup, in Neom, Saudi Arabia.

She was informed that she would be competing in another competition right around the time her school graduation was taking place. Then came another choice for sport. “It’s the life of an athlete. We are used to sacrificing a lot of things, it was a sacrifice. I chose the competition because it was a title I had dreamed of for a long time, and I have been swimming for 10 years. As a result, I missed the closure of this cycle, which was also very important.”

With the choice made, the athlete went swimming in the salty waters of Saudi Arabia. There were three days of training in the ocean, without a pool, which awakened an ironic allergy to sea water. Even though her skin was itchy and stained, she didn’t give up.

Lízian got second place in the heat and, with it, the world champion award for the first time. The celebration also came in a triple dose, as Ana Marcela won the seventh championship in the absolute and Matheus Melecchi was the winner in the Junior men’s.

“Three from Brazil on the podium. After swimming, it still hadn’t sunk in. But when it appeared on the pages of World Aquatics, I cried. It was a feeling I had never felt before,” he said.

World champion, Lízian is now starting to think about the future, on and off the water. At first, there is one certainty: not leaving Bahia. “I don’t see any other place other than Brazil, especially Salvador, to train for the marathon. For me, it’s the best place for the water marathon.”

In the waters, the main goal is to repeat the title, in 2025 and 2026, to become three-times world champion by the age of 19, when she surpasses the category age. Then, who knows, the dream of competing in the Olympics will become possible.

Lízian must participate in the Olympic pool and open sea trials to try to qualify for Los Angeles-2028. There are two places for women, and initially, Ana Marcela would stop after the Paris Olympic cycle, but 4th place in France left the veteran wanting another medal. So, she decided to try another cycle, leaving one more place open – which will have Lízian in the running.

The focus for a possible trip to the Olympics is the aquatic marathon, a great passion in the swimmer’s life. “Before, I liked the pool more, because when we arrive, the stands vibrate, and I always liked that. But, when I ran a marathon, there was no way to explain this contact with the sea. It’s surreal. It’s me and the sea.”

Even with plans to go to the Los Angeles Games, the big mission is in Brisbane, Australia, in 2032. “She has been learning that opportunities will arise and that it is possible to be among the best. These experiences at the World Cup, with international stars, living with Ana Marcela, made her see that it is a real world, that it is possible”, commented Arapiraca, Lízian’s coach.

Outside the water, sport continues to guide the life of the Bahian woman, who took the entrance exam at the end of this year. Currently, Lízian is thinking about studying nutrition or physiotherapy, to combine it with swimming – and, even so, continue working with the sport.

“I always ate little and, therefore, I always asked my mother to go alone to international competitions. I knew that, with her there, the moment a food came that I didn’t like, I would ask her to take me to another restaurant. Without it, I would need to eat whatever I had,” he commented.

“I think I started to improve my diet because of these competitions. The desire to do nutrition is to understand foods and, who knows, maybe even start to like some of them, for the benefits they can bring me”, he added.

The desire to study physiotherapy comes both from understanding the importance of treatment for an athlete and from the desire to continue collaborating even after leaving the seas.

“I do physiotherapy three times a week. Sometimes I come back from competitions full of pain and see that physiotherapy is essential for an athlete. I wanted to get into this field so, when I finish my career, I could help other athletes, travel with them to competitions. As a former athlete in the future, I would already have contact with the experience of international competition and it would be a way to continue going and adding both the knowledge I have about water and what I would have in physiotherapy”, he explained.

Deep down – or even on the surface -, the big plan for the future is what is written on the tattoo on Lízian’s ankle and which dives with her in every sea where she goes to compete: “keep swimming”.