Athletics, boxing, fencing, water sports, gymnastics, wrestling, judo, taekwondo, table tennis, archery, tennis, badminton and weight lifting. These are the first disciplines contemplated for the Olympic Training Center, an ambitious project by COB presented with the bid for Rio 2016. The revolutionary Olympic Training Center will centralize the infrastructure required to teach, train and develop athletes, optimizing the work of the technical commissions and of other sport professionals. In addition to the sports facilities, the center will also have an infrastructure for full support, including library, lecture rooms, auditorium, computer lab, lodgings, etc. The Olympic Training Center is an important legacy of the Rio 2016 bid for all of Latin America and the Caribbean, showing Brazil's commitment to the Olympic movement. Agberto Guimarães, Pan American champion runner in Caracas/1983 in the 800 and 1500 meters, and current manager of the COB Sports Department, explains the project in greater detail:

Q: What exactly is an Olympic Training Center?
A: An Olympic Training Center is an space for athlete training with the help of professionals and scientific education, in addition to equipment and facilities of the highest level. The main purpose is to centralize the infrastructure required for the athletes' development.

Q: Where did the project’s inspiration come from?
A: The idea came from observing the successful strategies of the world’s sports powers, which already have Olympic Training Centers.

Q: Does this project depend on the choice of Rio as the host of the Olympic Games?
A: No, the Olympic Training Center is a legacy of the bid process itself.

Q: Can it be set up in future in other Brazilian cities as well?
A: The initial idea is to have a main Olympic Training Center in Rio de Janeiro, a type of "headquarters," and to strengthen the use of Training Centers for Olympic sports already existent in other Brazilian cities. The Olympic Training Center will be directed toward the development and refining of the training of high-level athletes. The Training Centers exclusively for Olympic sport will be charged with training athletes.

Q: And how will the athlete internship cycles work?
A: The Olympic Training Center’s operations will be managed by an agenda elaborated according to the main national and international sports events. Following to this calendar, interns in relevant sports will be invited. During this period, the athletes will undergo a battery of tests and will use the physical and professional structure to support their training. At the end, the athletes and the technical committee will return home to continue the training and disseminate knowledge acquired.

Q: In addition to the training, what else can the Olympic Training Center offer the athletes?
A: The Olympic Training Center will provide services in the following areas: nutrition; physiotherapy; sports and clinical medicine; athlete career support; physiological, biomechanical, psychological and biochemical assessment; and a sports information center with infrastructure for courses, symposiums and lectures.

Q: How much will be invested to build and maintain it?
A: These investments are still being calculated. The funds will come from the Ministry of Sports, from sponsorship contracts and tax incentive laws.

Q: What was your greatest achievement as an athlete?
A: In the Olympic setting, it was fourth place in the 800 m of the Moscow Games, in 1980. In the continental games, it was the gold medals in the 1983 Caracas Pan American Games in the 800 and 1500 m.

Q: What were the main training difficulties in your time?
A: I began my career in Belém do Pará in 1974 (Agberto was born in the Pará city of Tucuruí). You can imagine the difficulties we had at the time. Belém only had one dirt track and it rained everyday. The heat was about 32ºC in the shade and humidity was about 90 percent. There was no equipment to support the training of athletes. Sponsorship was out of the question. And to make matters worse, Belém was very isolated from the southeast of Brazil, where the athletics competitions took place. Fortunately, I obtained a scholarship to study in the U.S. in 1978, and things started to get better.

Q: And what do you think has improved for today’s athletes?
A: Absolutely everything. In the case of athletics, today we have synthetic tracks of excellent quality spread through several states of Brazil, and a great number of good-quality competitions organized by CBAT [Brazilian Athletics Confederation]. COB, through its technical department, makes sure that all Brazilian athletes selected by their respective confederations obtain all the support required to prepare for the Olympic and Pan American Games: providing quality uniforms, promoting training camps for acclimatization… And many athletes receive financial aid from their confederations, or through Olympic Solidarity programs, in addition to sponsorship from private entities.

Q: What kind of legacy can the Olympic Training Center leave for Rio and Brazil?
A: The project itself will be a landmark in the development of Olympic sports in Brazil, since it will give the confederations the opportunity of training their athletes in a sports center equipped with the same infrastructure conditions as the centers found in other more developed countries. It will give many sports professionals the opportunity of taking part in the preparation of elite athletes and create sports professionals from all over Brazil.