After winning Brazil’s first medal at the Winter Games, Brazilian-Norwegian Lucas Pinheiro Braathen seeks to climb back onto the podium at the Milan-Cortina Games this Monday (16). The athlete will compete in the slalom race, in Bormio, northern Italy.
By draw held this Sunday, Lucas will be the sixth skier to make the first descent at the Stelvio Ski Center, starting at 10 am local time (6 am Brasília time). Performance in this race will define the position of the second descent, starting at 1:30 pm (9:30 am Brasília time). Lucas is considered the favorite after the gold obtained on Saturday (14) in the giant slalom.
One of his opponents will be Frenchman Clément Noël, who took gold in Beijing 2022 – he will be the fourth to make the first descent. Swiss Loic Meillard, bronze in the giant slalom, two positions behind Lucas, will be the second to compete. Brazilians Christian Soevik and Giovanni Ongaro will start, respectively, in 43rd and 57th.
Both slalom and giant slalom are considered technical categories of alpine skiing. Unlike the giant, this second race is shorter, lasting up to 60 seconds, and has more curves, with doors closer to each other. The times of the two descents of the day are added together for the final classification.
This Sunday (15), Lucas returned to the slopes for light training and to understand what the snow was like in Bormio. He also chose the skis he will use tomorrow, underwent a physiotherapy session and rested. On social media, he published a video in which he watched, with family and friends, Italian Federica Brignone’s victory in the giant slalom. It was Brignone’s second gold at these Games.
Regarding this Saturday’s “historic day”, the president of the COB (Brazilian Olympic Committee), Marco La Porta, stated this Sunday that the result obtained by Lucas will help boost winter sports in the country. “Lucas is a fantastic athlete, very focused, who understands very well what it means to be Brazilian,” he said.
For Anders Petterson, president of CBDN (Brazilian Snow Sports Confederation), winning gold was a team effort. “It was detailed work, which didn’t start yesterday and which involved COB, CBDN, Lucas’ team. Without this partnership and this work together, it would not have produced the fantastic result we had”, he stated.
Gold was highlighted in the Italian press. The newspaper La Repubblica published the achievement with the title “Braathen’s samba. Brazil is gold in the [slalom] giant: ‘If you believe, you can do it'”, remembering his journey through Norway and now Brazil. “A different, extroverted young man, with Nordic technique and a warm heart”, wrote the reporter.
At Corriere della Sera, explanations about “who is Lucas Braathen, the Brazilian skier who won a historic gold medal in the [slalom] giant of the Olympics”, with excerpts from the conversation between him and the Italian Alberto Tomba, 59, five medals in the technical categories at the Winter Games. Lucas spoke by phone with Tomba, broadcast live on an Italian television channel shortly after the victory. “Congratulations, Lucas. Gold medal for Brazil, can you believe that? You are the best”, said the former athlete.
The American The New York Times also commented on the performance, with the title “An Olympics of firsts: Brazil and Kazakhstan win surprising gold medals”, about the victories of the Brazilian-Norwegian skier and the skater Mikhail Shaidorov, from Kazakhstan, who won after the disastrous performance of the American Ilia Malinin.
