The COB (Brazilian Olympic Committee) announced this Thursday (19) that skier Lucas Pinheiro Braathen confirmed his participation in the next Olympic cycle of the Winter Games, with the intention of competing in the French Alps in 2030.
“Right after the race on Monday, we sat down with Lucas to talk a little and he already guaranteed us this next Olympic cycle”, said Marco La Porta, president of the COB, in Milan. “This is very important, because he brings together all the technical leadership of results, which will attract more athletes.”
The Brazilian-Norwegian won Brazil’s first medal at the Winter Games, winning in the giant slalom category of alpine skiing.
According to La Porta, the challenge ahead is how to get more out of this result. “The big challenge for clubs, confederations and the COB is how to manage this success,” he said. “We created a problem for ourselves, because if we don’t win gold in the next [Olimpíada] It’s going to be worse. The situation has gone up”, he stated, when taking stock of Brazilian participation in Milan-Cortina, at Casa Brasil, a COB space in Milan.
For Emílio Strapasson, responsible for the COB’s sporting and operational leadership, the medal was a turning point. The strategy for the next four years will be to continue attracting athletes who already work on snow and ice.
“Our strategy, especially at the Youth Olympic Games, was to look for Brazilians who already had contact with the cold, because the learning curve is very high. We will continue with this strategy. We have already launched a form on the confederation’s website for interested parties who are already looking for us”, said Strapasson, former skeleton athlete and current president of the CBDG (Brazilian Ice Sports Confederation).
Brazil was the third country in America to win a medal, after the United States and Canada.
As a result, the confederations and the committee say that, in recent days, the interest of Brazilians abroad in how to enter or insert their children into the competition circuit as representatives of Brazil has increased.
“We will always have the door open to new interested parties. Casa Brasil is important for this, so that people know that we have the project. So that Brazilians who live anywhere in the world know that Brazil is organized, has well-organized federations, good governance, and we are ready to welcome them”, said Strapasson. “We can provide support corresponding to the stage the athlete is at.”
In addition to the gold in alpine skiing, other milestones were reached in this edition, with unprecedented good performances also in skeleton and snowboard. With 14 athletes competing in five sports, Brazil had the largest delegation at the Winter Games since its first participation in 1992.
It was the largest number of athletes among the top 20. In the women’s skeleton, Nicole Silveira came in 11th place, the best result in Brazil in ice sports. In halfpipe snowboarding, Pat Burgener and Augustinho Teixeira finished 14th and 19th, respectively.
In the slalom, the team sprint and the men’s bobsled pair, the Brazilians achieved the best results in the country’s history. Another record was the 18 starts in races, compared to 15 in Beijing-2022.
Casa Brasil was also a milestone: it was the first time that the COB set up a structure of this type during the Winter Games. Widely publicized in the Italian press, the space occupied in Casa degli Artisti, an upscale neighborhood in Milan, received an average of 1,500 people per day, 70% of whom were foreigners.
