Sports

Brazilian fondness for sports in general is shown by the existence of some 8,000 sports clubs throughout the country. No other sport in Brazil can compare in popularity to soccer, where it is called futebol. (There is no other football played in the country.) This passion for the sport is reflected in the number and size of soccer stadiums all over the country.

Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro

The Maracanã Stadium, built in Rio de Janeiro for the 1950 World Cup, is the largest in the world with a capacity of 160,000. The Brazilian team was the first to win the World Cup five times - in 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002. There are five other stadiums in the country that can accommodate over 100,000 people each. Even people who are not particularly keen on soccer know the Brazilian player Pelé (Edson Arantes do Nascimento), internationally acclaimed as the greatest soccer player of all time. During his 18-year career in Brazil, Pelé scored more than 1,200 goals. Upon retiring from professional soccer in Brazil, Pelé tried to popularize the sport in the U.S. where he played for a few years with the Cosmos Soccer Club in New York.

Both indoor and beach Volleyball is a very popular sport. The indoor volleyball women’s team won the World Cup in 1991, and the men’s team won the Gold Medal at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992 as well as the World Cup in 2002. Although Beach Volleyball is a recently classified Olympic sport modality (1998), Brazil dominates the competition. The women’s team won the Gold and Silver Medals at the 1994 Atlanta Olympic Games. And in the following Games, in 2000, in Sydney, a third of Brazil’s medals were conquered playing beach volleyball.

Brazil is regarded as one of the major forces in basketball. The women’s team won the 1994 World Champion in Sidney, Australia, and the men’s team has turned in impressive performances at several Olympic Games as well as won World Championships.

Brazilians also enjoy tennis. In 1959 and in the early 1960s, Maria Ester Bueno won three Wimbledon Championships. In 1987, a Brazilian team was classified in the First Division of the Davis Cup. Today, the country’s best tennis player is Gustavo Kuerten, who won the French Open three times (1997, 2000, 2001).

Since the late 1960s, when Emerson Fittipaldi started accumulating victories in Formula One (F1) car racing, the sport has rapidly grown in popularity. A number of promising new drivers have come along, including Nelson Piquet, who was the World Champion in 1981, 1983, and 1987; Ayrton Senna, who won championships on the international racing circuits in 1988, 1990, and 1991, and had a fatal accident in a F1 race in Italy in 1994. Brazilian drivers have also achieved first positions at the Indy 500. Between 2000 and 2003 Brazilians have accounted for seven out of nine top three finishes, have twice started from the pole position (fastest qualifier), won all three races and were twice named fastest rookie. In 2001, Brazilians accounted for five of the top-ten finishing positions, and in 2003, Gil de Ferran, Hélio Castroneves and Tony Kanaan completed unprecedented 1-2-3 sweep, marking a third straight year of Brazilian dominance at Formula Indy’s premiere competition.

It is in athletics that Brazil has won most of its Olympic medals up to 2003 – ten – followed by yachting with seven. A total of 2.5 million judokas bear witness to the popularity of this sport, which is in third position as regards to the number of Olympic medals won by Brazil. Always anxious to take advantage of their country’s extensive coast and warm climate, Brazilians are increasingly taking up new sports activities such as surfing, windsurfing, and hang gliding.