July 24 will go down in Portuguese swimming history as the day Diogo Ribeiro won Portugal’s first world medal: silver in the 50m butterfly. “I’m speechless! I still can’t believe it. It’s a dream come true! I knew I could dream. Watch it game by game. Be focused and give it your all!” said the 18-year-old swimmer, the youngest of the finalists, in Fukuoka, Japan.
Until yesterday, the best result of a Portuguese swimmer in a world championship was Alexandre Yokochi’s 5th place, in the 200 breaststroke in Madrid 1986. And if Portugal now has five medals in history, two of them were the work of the young prodigy of Portuguese swimming, who already won bronze last year, at the age of 17, at the European Championships in Rome, at the same distance. The other three were also won at the European Championships by Yokochi (bronze in Sofia 1985, on the 200 backstroke), Alexis Santos (London 2016, on the 200 styles) and Gabriel Lopes (Rome 2022, on the 200 meters styles).
Yesterday was also the day the prodigy became a certainty. The junior world record holder for the distance (22.96s) had already made history by becoming the third Portuguese to reach a final after Alexandre Yokochi and Ana Barros, but now he is the first and only one on the world stage. He finished the 50m butterfly final in second place with 22.80 seconds (a new Portuguese record), just behind Italy’s Thomas Ceccon, who took the gold. Frenchman Maxime Grousset took bronze.
The three swimmers repeated the podium from the Europeans in Rome, but this time Diogo Ribeiro did the 50m butterfly in less than 27 thousandths of a second, compared to the time in Rome 2022, when he finished in 23.07 seconds and climbed a step on the podium, swapping places with the Gallic swimmer. The world record for the 50m butterfly is held by Ukraine’s Andrii Govorov (22.27s).
Story of a blackmail
Born on October 27, 2004, Diogo was a baby when he first came into contact with a pool with his older sister. He was six years old (!) when his swimming teacher offered him the choice between football and the swimming pool. The boy who was once a regular and is now “normal” decided to put the teacher in a similar dilemma: “I will only stay in swimming if you teach me butterfly swimming. And it was through this little blackmail that the phenomenon of Portuguese swimming was born.
At the age of eight, he started participating in the Cadets Regional Circuit in Coimbra, representing the Beatriz Santos Foundation – Clube. After four years he transferred to Clube Náutico Académico, in whose service he achieved his first regional podium, but it was at União de Coimbra that medals became part of the young swimmer’s life.
In 2021, he joined the Benfica swimming team and joined the Jamor High Performance Center (CAR), where he began training under the guidance of the new national coach, the Brazilian Alberto Silva, better known as Albertinho, who has teamed up with Olympic medalists César Cielo and Thiago Pereira and also with Gustavo Borges or Nicholas Santos.
And, according to Diogo, if he threw himself into the water and swam until some time ago. Now he works in the gym, works on biomechanics, studies turning, finishing, starting techniques… and the results are visible. After winning three world junior titles in the 50 and 100 meter butterfly and in the 50 meter freestyle, he made history as the second world champion as a senior.
July 24 and the achievements that filled it, risking to take a place among the five discreet (and almost small) tattoos embedded in the skin that are a summary of life: one of them is a phrase Me I could explain (I wish I could explain), which has to do with the July 2021 accident where he was thrown into a hospital bed and forced him to be hospitalized with bruises all over his body, burns to his legs, a dislocated shoulder, a broken foot and an internal injury to his chest, in addition to losing part of his right index finger.
Exactly two years later he reached the world stage and promises not to stop here. In fact, last October during the DN report, when asked if he was prepared for the media and the pressure to become the best Portuguese swimmer ever, he replied: “With training I will get better than that”. A sentence that caused him some torment, due to accusations of lack of humility and which now seems banal for the talent he could become. With him, Portugal stopped dreaming of an Olympic swimming final to dare to win a medal and next year in Paris 2024.
At the Fukuoka World Cup, Diogo will also compete in the 100m freestyle and 100m butterfly.
Source: DN
