Sao Paulo, February 24. Brazilian Olympian Edson Bindilatti wants to build something unimaginable in Sao Paulo: the first bobsleigh start track in Latin America. Work began in 2021, but has been on hold for months due to lack of funding. $80,000 prevents him from realizing his “dream”.
Bindilatti (Camamu, Bahía, 1979) is a pioneer of the so-called “Ice Formula One” in Brazil, a tropical country where temperatures rarely drop below zero, but little by little he is taking the pulse of sports winter especially the bobsleigh.
The results of the Brazilian bobsleigh team are improving year after year. They have already participated in five Winter Olympics. Last time, at Beijing 2022, they reached the final and they were three-time Copa América champions.
After making history on the ice rinks, this Bahianan with an easy smile wants to democratize the modality in Brazil and allow young people from the periphery to train and become professionals, an option barely viable today abroad.
For this, it intends to build the first bobsleigh starting track not only in Brazil, but in Latin America.
“Brazil is not just football, Brazil is much more,” he said in an interview with EFE amid the foundations of the half-built structure in the center of Mario Chekin training, in São Caetano do Sul, in the Sao Paulo metropolitan area. .
A UNIQUE SPACE IN LATIN AMERICA
On paper, the suspended track will be about 120 meters long by 6 meters wide. The first part will be downhill and the second on a slope to serve as a brake.
A few iron rails will cross it on which the sled will slide. The objective is to repeat this first movement in which the athletes run behind the “bolide” to give it speed and get on it quickly.
This type of choreography, in pairs or fours, is essential to obtain a good result.
Space is already reserved in this Mario Chekin sports complex, although at the moment where the track should hang, only grass is growing.
“I never had a specific place to be able to train. That’s where I saw this dream, with the idea of wanting to give back everything that sport has given me”, says this multichampion Brazilian, on his way to his sixth Winter Olympics.
Bindilatti began his sporting career in the decathlon and only discovered bobsleigh by being inspired by the film “Cool Runnings”, a 90s comedy that tells how four Jamaicans fight to participate in the Winter Olympics, when they have never seen snow.
SILVER DROPPER
Launching the track project was a real chimera. The first contribution came from the pocket of Bindilatti and his bobsleigh team.
Later, they obtained the support of a massage gel (Progel Sports) with which they signed a sponsorship of 10,000 reais (1,900 dollars). They then raised an additional 37,000 reais ($7,200) through an online crowdfunding campaign.
“In the end, it was a total of 80,000 reais ($15,500) to get to where we are today. Unfortunately, our resources ran out,” he laments.
With the money raised, they have just built the foundations and walls at one end of the track, which will include a small weight room in the lower part.
Bindilatti calculates that to finish they need around 400,000 reais ($80,000). If they are successful, he estimates that in less than six months the track could be working.
These days, he is looking under the rocks for potential partners, sponsors to bring their grain of sand.
He also knocked on the door of the Ministry of Sports, taken over by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and led by a Brazilian volleyball legend like Ana Moser, who has among his projects the promotion of sport in the educational field.
“A better country” is built “through education and sport” because “sport transforms lives”; “It’s the basis” for forming “better citizens”, Bindilatti says hopefully.
Carlos Menese