Swimming – 7/24/2023 11:42 PM
By Miguel Candeias
Just over two years of successes after successes, since the end of his first junior season Diogo Ribeiro has experienced a meteoric rise in national and international swimming, with climbs to the podium in the most important competitions. It cannot be said that Diogo, born in Coimbra, was unknown from the youngest levels of training because, for those who regularly walk on the piers of swimming pools, he had long been a reference and serious promise. There are those who even say that, in a way, the target of greed. Accompanying her older sister, from a very early age, visits to the pool became an almost daily habit after losing her father at the age of 4. Even because of his mother’s desire to keep him busy and wanting him to be more focused.
After passing through the swimming schools of Fundação Beatriz Santos and later at Náutico Académico, where he left with coach André Vaz to join União de Coimbra, after a disagreement between the two that led to their separation, it ended up being under the guidance of Vítor Raposo that he climbed to the first major international podium, becoming runner-up in the Junior Europe 100 moth in Rome-2021. Weeks before the much talked about – never forgotten by himself – motorcycle accident. That summer he would end up moving to Benfica and joining CAR Jamor under the guidance of the newly hired national coach with enviable achievements, the Luso-Brazilian Alberto Silva.
It took time, after New Year’s Eve, for him to adapt to life in Lisbon and the demands of the new coach, but the results exploded in the spring Nationals in Coimbra in which he twice beat – preliminary and final – the absolute maximums of the 100 free, 50 butterfly and 100 butterfly.
Four months later, he won the 50 butterfly at the Oran-2022 Mediterranean Games and silver in the 100 free, and then he returned to Rome, this time to compete in the absolute European where he secured, still 17 years old, the bronze in the 50 butterfly. At the time, only Portugal’s third ever podium at the event. Less than a month later, in Peru, he was crowned three-time junior world champion in Lima-2022 in the 50 free, 50 and 100 butterfly, also committing the feat of becoming the world record holder in the category (22.96) in the 50 butterfly. This season, he became the first Portuguese to obtain three Olympic minimums A for a single edition of the Games, which will allow him to compete in the 50 and 100 free and 100 butterfly in Paris-2024. Alexandre Yokochi in Madrid 1986 and Ana Barros in the 50 backstroke in Perth-1991. Endowed with an enviable natural ability and a unique will and easy and quick learning, it should also be noted that in the last two seasons Diogo Ribeiro has already set 16 (!) absolute national records: the 50 butterfly six times; 100 moth another four; 100 free five; and of the 50 free one.
2023-07-24 22:42:00
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