“I was practically born in this gym.” In a funny tone, Catarina Nunes describes her relationship with trampolines – her favorite sport – which she has practiced since she was a little girl at Lisboa Ginásio Clube: her second home.
At the age of 22 and after winning some medals that make her a high caliber athlete, the young woman recalls that “gymnastics has always been the safe haven” in which she found an escape and a family “for life” . By the way, the father is the coach of the trampoline athletes, and the mother even gave training in the field of acrobatics. “I officially started training when I was 5 years old, but I was here long before that,” he confirms.
“Gymnastics has always been a very healthy and positive thing in my life. Here I am with people who I know like and support me – which is a good thing and hard to get elsewhere. We all have the same goals, the same priorities and ways of thinking, so this gym has become a good way to create strong bonds,” he explains.
In addition to gymnastics, which she devotes a large part of her time to with two and a half hours a day, Catarina is also attending the fifth year of medical training at the Nova Medical School – Faculty of Medical Sciences in Lisbon.
“I was always very concerned about school and my parents taught me that studying would be a priority and not gymnastics. Trampolines were always something for me to have fun with and I had many good examples from some of my fellow athletes, who were already in their medical careers I followed the legacy they left I love the health sector and since I had that opportunity I decided to pursue medicine Now that I am in the fifth year of the degree I couldn’t imagine doing anything else do,” he says.
Between trampolines and medicine – two very demanding fields – the future doctor admits that time management has not been easy, but she has “worked hard to manage everything in the best possible way”. “I do my best to look good, both in the gym and at school,” he confesses. That’s why he makes “an effort not to confuse the two things”.
To reconcile these two factors in the athlete’s life, the Jogos Santa Casa Education Grant has been “one of the best supports” Catarina has had in recent years. “The Jogos Santa Casa have been one of the most constant and important supports in supporting my sports and school career.
Both me and other athletes have gained access to better equipment to study and even invest in training equipment through this help. It was a crucial help,” he says.
This grant, established in collaboration with the Portuguese Olympic Committee and the Portuguese Paralympic Committee, helps athletes pay and prevents them from dropping out of top sports and their studies prematurely: “It is a motivation not to neglect our academic life train and try their best to combine both things.There are many athletes who end up giving up their sports life because they can’t combine it with their academic life or because they don’t have the money to be able to do both.And in that sense this scholarship is a great help.”
Catarina Nunes describes her final years as “madness” full of “very remarkable” moments. In 2018, he won the bronze medal in the final of the European Trampoline Championships in Baku, Azerbaijan. In 2021, together with Beatriz Martins, she won the bronze medal in the final of the women’s synchronized trampoline at the World Championships, also in Baku.
For the foreseeable future, the athlete and future doctor wants to qualify for the Olympic Games in Paris, in 2024. But she leaves her advice: “It is important not to give up sports or school, especially with this incentive that makes all the difference “Even if the semester is really hard, there is always light at the end of the tunnel and a reward for hard work. It’s always worth it to keep trying to achieve our goals, be they academic, sporting or even both.”
Driving and braking are new
The Jogos Santa Casa Education Scholarships, now known as the “Impulse Program”, celebrate their 10th anniversary today, with the award ceremony at the Rectory of the University of Lisbon at 3pm.
This strategy, in effect since 2012, “has already awarded 422 scholarships, to a total of 215 athletes from 24 sports, in a financial effort of more than 1.2 million euros,” said Maria João Matos, communications director of Jogos Santa Casa .
In this 10th edition, 47 scholarships will be awarded to 36 Olympic and 11 Paralympic athletes from 15 disciplines, with two disciplines debuting in the program: Riding and Breaking (sports dance), which will “help athletes participating in the Olympic programs, Paralympics and Deaflympics, to boost their university careers and reduce early school leaving, which is very common among elite athletes”.
Source: DN
