Francis Obikwelu. When the speed athlete won the silver medal at the 2004 Athens Olympics, Carolina Duarte decided to change her life. Athletics became a priority and managed to achieve remarkable results for Portuguese sport for almost twenty years.
Despite only having 10% vision, Carolina Duarte is a 100% champion due to a genetic problem. And beyond the sports world, he manages to be an inspiration through his charisma and victorious life story, having received a long round of applause at the 8th edition of the Estoril conferences.
“I tried all the other sports, but it was actually Francis Obikwelu who made it click and shortly after that I started athletics,” he begins to explain to DN.
Carolina does not hide that athletics is a challenging modality, requiring a lot of physical and mental control. With a young daughter, the athlete admits that her biggest setback is currently combining motherhood with training and rest. “It’s an almost impossible mission. It’s hard to eat on time and stick to a routine. It’s hard, but I’m doing my best,” he insists.
From this perspective, Carolina Duarte warns of the need to increase mental health support in Portugal, especially for athletes. “Fortunately, mental health is now much discussed and is undoubtedly an important point for success. Portugal is still a little short in supporting the mental health of the general population and athletes, but little by little many athletes have started receiving help with this,” he reveals. Mental support is “a necessity” for the athlete.
Mental health is not the only challenge, however. According to Carolina Duarte, in Portugal it is also important “to understand how Portuguese athletics will reach the level of other countries that are superpowers”.
In addition, there is a discrepancy between training time and rest time, which ultimately harms some athletes: “Many years ago there was the doping problem, but now everything is very controlled. This problem is almost non-existent. It is more a matter of training and the associated recovery need. More and more attention is being paid to this, but Portugal is still a bit in the past, in the sense that training is still the main focus. Still, we are going in a good way”, witnessed.
Willpower
All top athletes struggle daily to reach their ‘best form ever’ and Carolina Duarte is no exception.
After winning the silver medal in the 400 meters T13 (visual impairment) at the Paralympic World Championships in Athletics, which took place in Paris in July this year, he is very proud. “I set the fastest time of the last 10 years. I prided myself on being able to stay focused and motivated. I didn’t break down if the training didn’t go well, or if I couldn’t train for so long. I wanted to, so everything went well,” he explains.
Because there are setbacks, Carolina Duarte admits that athletics is “a very demanding sport, it’s not enough to want it. You have to have a lot of willpower and give up a whole life that you can’t have, like going out” with friends or family . But “if you are focused on the goal, then everything makes sense in the end,” he emphasizes.
For the foreseeable future, the goal is to win medals at the 2024 Summer Paralympics.
Source: DN
