Samuel Barata was born on July 19, 1993 in Lausanne, Switzerland, but moved to a village near Covilhã at the age of 10. It was there that he started racing in Grupo Desportivo AC da Bouça. The long-distance runner ran his first marathon in April. In October he broke the National Record in the half marathon. He covered the distance in 59m40s, bettering the mark of Luís Jesus, who had reigned for 26 years. This month, the Benfica fan secured his presence at Paris 2024 by running the Valencia Marathon in 2:07.35.
We ate at the end. On December 3, he achieved the desired qualification for the Olympic Games that failed in 2021…
It wasn’t easy, I raised the bar and tried to run faster than the qualifying time to get closer to the national record. I paid dearly for the last part (22nd), but I managed to qualify immediately for Paris2024. The 2019 experience went very poorly and I didn’t manage to qualify for Tokyo 2020, but I kept working and luckily everything fell into place.
How did you deal with disappointments?
In 2022 I was very good, very well trained, I had the bold expectation of achieving a good result in the 10,000 meters at the European Championships in Munich, but that day things went wrong, I woke up very unwell, I don’t know if it was mental, if it was physical… I know I couldn’t complete the test. I have some people by my side who have helped me through this, especially my family, my girlfriend, my friends, my training group. I started training again, motivated myself again and after a year and a half I managed to achieve top-level results and achieve the qualifying mark for Paris 2024. It was worth all the sacrifices of the past months and years.
Source: DN
