Yesterday a spectacular story unfolded at the Rio Olympics. A young judo practitioner from the sprawling favela complex Cidade de deus, made famous by the 2002 film City of God won Gold in the women's 57kg Judo.
But Rafaela's story is much more impressive when you take into account the abuse she suffered after the 2012 Olympic games in London were at the age of 16 she was disqualified for a leg grab (Rule changes happen so fast in Judo Olympics that no leg grabs cost more than one Olympic hopeful their dreams of medalling).
She suffered a torrent of racist abuse from Brazilian social media that led her to a deep depression and almost cost Brazil her talents.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...-of-racism-now-shes-an-olympic-gold-medalist/
Anyhow, plenty has been written about Rafaelas journey already (Well worth a read if you want to be inspired):
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...Judo-Silva-wins-gold-host-country-Brazil.html
But somthing that nobody seems to have picked up on is this. One of Rafaela's biggest inspirations is... Ronda Rousey. And when Ronda visited the Instituto Reacao in 2014 and again in 2015, owned by Olympic bronze medalist Flavio Canto in the huge favela Rocinha among her many admirers was a young Rafaela (Seen here)
I wonder how much ROnda's visit helped Rafaela on her path from depression to the Gold. Obviously we can only guess - and maybe not at all - but by the videos of the visit and the photos online it strikes me as possibly playing a big part.
I'd just like to say how proud I am that an MMA star such as Ronda goes out of her way to support such a great project as Flavio's Instituto Reacao.
Read more about her second visit here:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/uf...ocial-project-gift-beating-Bethe-Correia.html
Hope you don't mind me connecting the dots!