A comma. A dash. A second in millenniums. An ocean of drops. In the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games, a grain of sand in a crowded stadium. A puff of air, a heartbeat. To the Brazilian Maurren Maggi, nothing can be bigger than a centimetre.

There were 26 steps in eight seconds, the jump with the right foot and a 7.04m flight. Then, more than 30 minutes of expectation. The main opponent, the Russian Tatyana Lebedeva, Olympic and world champion at the time, would have four more jumping attempts. She fouled three. At her last chance, she performed the perfect technique. She rose from the sand looking at the distance measuring bar. Few seconds later, the result at the electronic scoreboard: 7.03m.

With both hands in her face and the excited crowd, Maurren runs down the track and meets her staff at the bleachers. She is moved. She stretches a big flag of Brazil and goes for the lap of honour with a Chinese flag miniature. It was the most expected gold, the summit in a detail.

“It was a unique emotion for me”, she recalls. “It is the top of the world. It is where all of us struggle to get. It is registered in history, no one can erase it. Now, after almost three years, it is time to begin to think of defending my title. The experience counts. There are new girls appearing, but, till 2012, I will be focused and compete as equals”, says Maurren, about to complete 35 years, Sofia’s mother, but with the same jolly expression, almost juvenile, of a woman that until recently used to carry her teddy bear together with the sport material to the tracks of the world.
 

Olympic Games at home

Competing in the João Havelange Olympic Stadium track, stage of Athletics in 2016, is common in Maurren’s career. She was a Rio 2007 Pan-American Games champion with the crowded bleachers screaming her name. In May, she tested the facility once more in Brazil 2011 Grand Prix. Another gold medal.

“It is always great to compete here. They [the audience] are very welcoming! They support everything. We always have the chance to improve when at home. In 2016, it will be spectacular. The Brazilian people know how to celebrate. I don’t know if I’m going to get there, but, if I get, I want to celebrate after the Games, more than ever”, jokes the athlete, that trains in São Paulo, financial centre and the most populous city in Brazil.

Maurren came to dispute 100m hurdles competitions till 2002. Since then, she has focused in long jump competitions, including the triple jump in the menu in certain occasions. The mark that took her to the Olympic gold medal was just the third of her career. In 1999, reached 7.26m in Bogotá (Colombia). In 2003, reached 7.06m in Milan (Italy). The long jump world record was set in 1988. The Soviet Galina Chistyakova reached 7.52m in Leningrad (nowadays located in Russia).

The Brazilian School

Maurren’s gold has raised her to the level of Athletics major star in female Brazilian history. She won the fourth gold medal for the country in the sport, after Joaquim Cruz in the 800m in Los Angeles 1984, and Adhemar Ferreira da Silva, in the triple jump in Helsinki 1952 and Melbourne/Stockholm 1956. The recipe to reduce the gap between the Olympic golds, Maurren believes it is in school.

“Education and school were crucial. I have always had sport in my school. I shone in my school, won scholarship to compete and maintained my development. The school is the way. Someday, this will be common here in Brazil. You have to popularise the sport, then you take the most talented to train harder. The Olympic champions come from there.”

Given the opportunities, Maurren has shortened distances that seemed endless. After not attending the Athens 2004 Games because of a doping suspension, she started competing again after two years away from the tracks. Since then, victory is her middle name. At the Beijing Olympic Stadium, the heartbeat, the clapping hands and the puff of air pushed her a centimetre further, a centimetre that couldn’t be bigger.