Olympic trajectories of Brazilian athletes:

in search of sport performance and national recognition (1928-1976)

Abstract

This article presents the results of a research that investigated the representations created by some Brazilian periodicals about the relationship between sporting practice and the female gender, from 1928 to 1976, in more detail about the participation of Brazilian women in the Modern Olympic Games. The corpus documentary is made up of newspaper and magazine publications, interviews and photographs, documents located though the Digital Hemetoreca of National Library of Brazil and other virtual sites. At the same time, we selected academic research that took sports and/or athletes’ careers as an object of analysis. The objective was to analyze how sexist structures shaped the Sporting environment in the period studied, influenced the public perception of womanly athletes and affected their careers. In this exercise, we are faced with unique trajectories and similar itineraries. Against the tide of erasure, we highlight the paths taken by athletes who dared to stand out and break with sexist structures that assigned them a place of submission and guardianship. With different life stories, Brazilian athletes faced a lot of hostility. Sometimes his Sporting abilities they were belittled. Many incidents and conflicts permeated their paths, highlighting the intersectionality between gender, race and social class.