Manuel dos Santos (swimmer)
Manuel dos Santos (right) at the 1960 Olympics
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| Personal information | ||||||||||
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| Full name | Manuel dos Santos Júnior | |||||||||
| Nationality |
 Brazil
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| Born |
February 22, 1939 Guararapes, São Paulo, Brazil |
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| Sport | ||||||||||
| Sport | Swimming | |||||||||
| Strokes | Freestyle | |||||||||
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Medal record
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Manuel dos Santos Junior (born February 22, 1939) is a former Brazilian swimmer, former world record holder and a bronze medalist in 100-metre freestyle at the Olympic Games in Rome in 1960.
At 4 years of age, Manoel spent months in a hospital, recovering from recurrent threats of pneumonia and similar diseases, that his body suffered. His father saw in swimming the salvation of that drama. Before completing eleven years old, in early 1950, Manoel was studying in Rio Claro, in the Gymnasium Koelle, a German college. The boy found himself away from his family, which he saw only on holidays and "holy week", when he took the train to the western state. There in Rio Claro, the rigid routine of the college, Manoel fits well with the swimming program. In a 20-meter pool, under the guidance of Bruno Buch, his first master, he began to train, compete and make the team gym.
The strongest swimmer of the group was a boy three years older than Manoel, named João Gonçalves Filho, future champion and South American record holder in the backstroke and an athlete in various sports, who participated in various Olympic Games.
In 1955, Manoel dos Santos approached the national top. He swam backstroke, and his training was more focused in this style. In the 100-meter freestyle, Brazil was in a time of transition in national leadership. The top three sprinters in the country at the turn of the decade and early '50s (Aram Boghossian, Sérgio Rodrigues and Plauto Guimarães) had retired. Paulo Catunda and Haroldo Lara were the fastest at this time. Lara was the best swimmer in the country until 1957, when he retired, moved to Italy and became an opera singer.
In March 1955, at age 16, Manoel was summoned to his first international competition, the II Pan American Games in Mexico City. At this time, athletes were still amateurs. In Mexico, after a trip into a military aircraft, a DC-3, which lasted four days, with overnight in Belém, Trinidad and Tobago and Cuba, Manoel competed very poorly. His main memory of the tournament was the moment he left desolate of proof, fell on a nearby heating pool and pretending to be loosening up, cried a lot, solitude, until the last tear is lost hidden in the middle of chlorine.
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Wikipedia