April 2021 : Rene Pereira

Rower of the Month – April 2021

Brazilian rower Rene Pereira has Tokyo 2020 in his sights after a year that’s disrupted his training in so many ways.  The 40-year-old Paralympian and World Cup medalist tells us what motivates him and who inspires him.

World Rowing: How has the past 12 months been for you?
Rene Pereira: My last 12 months can be summed up in a mix of feelings and emotions. Early in the pandemic, I was very apprehensive about the postponement of the Tokyo Games, but when that happened I felt more relaxed.

Then I took my foot off the accelerator and went to try to enjoy my family a little more, which as an athlete we often fail to do. However, there were some unpleasant news regarding health with close people and family members that greatly affected my training routine, in addition to the already necessary adaptations of isolation and lack of a suitable training place. At the end of 2020, I realised that I needed to react and head in a new direction.

In the last four months, I had to reinvent myself, even moving into another city so that I could keep up my dream of being a medallist and I have been feeling more optimistic and hopeful.

WR: How has your training – and the rest of your life – changed because of corona virus?
RP: In the first six to eight months, I was in constant contact with my family. At the beginning, it was positive, but as the days went by without an adequate routine or school hours, the mandatory isolation became exhausting for everyone. The same happened with my training. Despite mostly training in the simulator before the pandemic, I suffered from mental fatigue and lack of a season calendar that could motivate me as an athlete.

The improvement came only after the month of October, when I ended up getting Covid-19, experiencing moderate symptoms, which made me take the courage to open up new horizons.

Since then, as I mentioned above, I searched for a place outside of Salvador, which has given me better training conditions in the water, despite having lost the monitoring of the team I had in Salvador. Several changes and adaptations, something that life has already made me experience and learn from my own spinal cord injury years ago.

WR: Are you planning to go to the Tokyo Paralympics, and if so, how is training going?
RP: Not only I do have plans, but also I have lived for that goal. After securing a place for Brazil in the 2019 World Championships, I had a difficult year, even thinking about giving up. However, I confess that I do not allow that word to be part of my dictionary.

I still have some logistical obstacles to overcome as opposed to some of my opponents out there who have better training conditions, but I am confident that in August I will be in Japan, in good shape, to represent my nation the best way possible.

At this moment, I am recovering from a low back pain due to an extruded hernia, but until then I had been training three days a week in water and the others days at the gym and simulator.

WR: How did you first get into rowing and why do you still row?
RP: I started rowing in 2014 as a way to reframe my life after an injury. I had always been a sportsman and I missed being an athlete. I had already played football professionally before and I have a black belt in Karate.

After my injury, I had lost that identity. I started to practice swimming and decided to take on competitive rowing. What keeps me rowing is the physical and mental state I have to be while practicing and now the dream of being a Paralympic medallist.

WR: What is your most memorable race?
RP: It has been five years that I’ve been competing in the international circuit between World Cups, World Championships and the Paralympic Games. However, I have special memories about three:

The Qualification for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games that took place in France, in 2015. In that event, I had fractured my rib 40 days earlier, which greatly slowed down my preparation but I still obtained a good place among the first seven that would qualify in advance.

The other event was the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games. I was part of an event of this magnitude within a short time of practice. It was also special to be in my country alongside friends and family. Finally the World Cup in Rotterdam in 2019, an event in which I was runner-up.

WR: Where is your favorite place to train?
RP: Of all the places I have had the opportunity to row, the University of São Paulo course and Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas in Rio de Janeiro are my favorites in Brazil.

A cool experience that I had was a training camp that I did at the end of 2016 on my own at the Miami Beach Rowing. I felt very welcomed and surprised by the structure of the place.

WR: What is your advice to any new rowers starting out?
RP: A single piece of advice: do it out of love and do not give up in the face of the obstacles that will inevitably arise. High performance sport in its essence is made to give up, either due to difficulties in maintaining itself, lack of support and adequate logistics, injuries, among other problems. You will only stand out if you’re strong-minded and do not throw the towel even in the most difficult moments.

WR: What do you do when you are not rowing?
RP: I tend to be with my family, getting involved with medical matters, since I am a doctor by training or even trying different sports.

WR: What do you do for fun or to relax?
RP: I have been policing myself in this regard, as I have not given myself much opportunity for this matter, which I believe to be of paramount importance. At the moment I am indebted to myself on this topic.

WR: Which sports person do you most admire?
RP: I have always identified myself with self-confident athletes. As soccer was my favourite sport, I had as my idol a two-time world football champion named Romario.

Ayrton Senna is also an athlete who inspires me by the determination and perseverance he showed in Formula 1. More recently, I have been captivated by Brazilian surfers like Medina and Ítalo Ferreira, who besides being talented, show dedication and daring when competing.