07 Dec 2011
Brazil Wins the 2002 South American Rowing Championships.
Brazil took eight of the 14 races
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by Guilherme Rosemberg.
After 14 years without winning the title of South American Rowing Champion, Brazil managed to win eight of the fourteen races of the Championships held on home turf in the city of Curitiba from November 19th to December 1st. Second place Chile won four gold medals followed by Argentina with two victories.
Counting a total of 124 athletes from Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay, the event was also part of the 7th South American Games. Brazil, racing at home, had the biggest team with 29 athletes.
The most disputed race of the event was the lightweight quadruple sculls (LM4x), in which Chile, a big power in lightweight rowing, beat Brazil by less than one second. At the 500m mark, Chile was more than a boat length ahead of the Brazilians, but Brazil upped the rate and narrowed the margin between the two boats. Chile crossed the line with a time of 6:14.53 and Brazil with a time of 6:14.84.
But one of the biggest revelations of the weekend was Brazilian Armando Max, racing in the single scull. Max, who was born mute and deaf won a silver medal with a time of 7:22.03, just three seconds behind the Argentinean, Santiago Fernandez, 7th place in the last World Championships. He also won a gold medal in the Men’s Eight, where, at 19 years old, he was the youngest member of that crew.
Women’s rowing also had its share of surprises. The Brazilian pair, comprised of Caroline Beloni and Kyssia Cataldo won against the more experienced Chileans, Carolina Godoy and Paola Rodriguez, silver medallists in the lightweight women’s pair in at the 2003 World Championships in Seville in September, winning by 12 seconds with a time of 7:59.55 “It was nice to win, and we feel we are helping to improve Brazilian rowing” said Caroline Beloni, stroke of the Brazilian pair.
In the Men’s Eight event, the first 1000m of the race was marked by a hard dispute between Brazil and Argentina, but by the 1500m mark Brazil already had a good length ahead, clocking a 5:33.40 with Argentina in second, with a time of 5:39.35 followed closely by Chile with a 5:40.72 Peru placed fourth.