When João Victor Oliva and the Escorial horse began their participation in the individual dressage test at the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, the TV Globo broadcast had, in addition to narrator Rembrandt Júnior, only former athlete Hortência Marcari as commentator. No equestrian specialists. However, the “Queen”, as she is still called today for her brilliant career in basketball, is Oliva’s mother, and the next few minutes were strong for her, who ended her participation with a choked voice and trying to hold back tears.
The emotion made the broadcast fun and full of pearls that made up for the lack of a commentator who knew how to explain what happened in the competition. And it was obvious that information wouldn’t be the strong point when the narrator asked for an analysis, and Hortência replied with a noncommittal comment: “I’m not very understanding, but I think he’s wonderful, he’s doing very well!”.
The former player also recalled that, in her son’s first Olympic participation, in Rio-2016, she could not accompany him – she was working, commenting on one of the basketball matches.
While Oliva continued to perform to the sound of “Copacabana”, the famous song by Barry Manilow, the duo on the air continued to show a lack of intimacy with the event, triggering generic comments such as “we see the harmony between rider and horse”. Rembrandt even outlined commenting on the song and released “accompanied by a song…”, but he never completed the sentence and left silence in the air for a few seconds. The narrator, fortunately, identified “Girl from Ipanema”, the next song in the performance.
“I look at the steps, the movements,” Rembrandt would say without any kind of technical analysis. Hortência compensated by telling the story of her son and the animal, acquired recently. “He washes the horse, does everything with the horse. He interacts, stays in the stall with the horse… This is very important. He loves what he does. He has my DNA.” Commentary countered with the phrase “love, passion and dedication”, said by the narrator almost in the tone of a political slogan.
The end of Oliva’s presentation had a behavioral assessment. “From João’s face, he did very well,” said Hortência. “That’s what matters. You said… If he’s okay, if he felt okay, that’s okay for us too,” concluded the narrator.
Then, back in the studio and in the company of the presenter Felipe Andreoli, Hortência’s emotion was even clearer: “By the time I saw it ended and he hugged the horse and started to smile, I felt calmer.” In a choked voice, the Queen continued, “I cry for nothing. I am happy. Very much. I know how hard he struggled to classify this horse at the last minute. I can’t wait to talk to him now,” she said, with tears in the eyes. João Victor Oliva was the first to perform on the day and scored 70.419% in his performance.
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