31 July,2016 10:52 AM IST | | AFP
Rio citizens, also known as Cariocas, don’t need to be inspired by the visiting Olympians to get fitter. Sporting activity is a way of life despite Brazil battling obesity concerns
Rio de Janeiro: Rio de Janeiro's residents, or Cariocas, don't need the Olympics to prove their city is the centre of the sporting world - they know that the second they step outside.
Rio de Janeiro's residents seen playing football at Copacabana beach in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. PIC/Getty Images
Winter or summer - well, there isn't too much difference in tropical paradise - crowds of locals get up at dawn for a jog.
That might be true in many cities. What's different here is that Cariocas also rise for rowing, paddleboarding, group swimming in the Atlantic, climbing on Sugarloaf Mountain, surfing, skateboarding, football, volleyball - the list goes on.
And then after work, out they all come again. Every evening, Copacabana, Ipanema and Barra beaches fill with people in bathing suits, bikinis and Lycra athletic gear.
OLYMPIC SPIRIT: A woman takes selfie at Copacabana beach in Rio on Saturday. Pic/AFP
Sports all day
Even at two or three in the morning, it's common to see employees from hotels and restaurants playing beach football by floodlight at the end of their long shifts.
It's the healthy, even sometimes fanatically healthy, side of a country where obesity is a serious problem, with more than 52 percent considered overweight nationwide.
"We're addicted to sport. We have classes from Monday to Thursday and if we can, we go Friday too. And Saturday. And Sunday," said Manuela Jifoni, a 34-year-old foot volleyball player waiting for her companions to show up on Flamengo beach.
Olympic beach volleyball player Adriana Behar on Rio
Leonardo Ghisoni, a Hawaiian outrigger canoe champion and instructor, said "there's no better city than Rio" for swimming sports, given the average annual temperature of 24 Celsius.
"I have students of all ages. At six in the morning, older women come and in the afternoon, it's the adolescents," Ghisoni, 44, said.
Terrain options
Marcus Vinicius Freire, sports director at the Brazilian Olympic Committee, which oversees the 465-strong team at the Summer Games, said that Rio is a sports capital for three basic reasons. "First, it's the geography: it's green, there's water, mountains, flat areas, so you have options. Secondly, there's the temperature, and thirdly there's the Carioca spirit," he said. That spirit is partly the easygoing Carioca way, but it also includes the love of living outdoors, where the beach becomes an extension of the living room and swimming is feasible 365 days a year.
Adriana Behar, a silver medal-winning Olympic beach volleyball player in the Sydney 2000 and Athens 2004 Games, said: "There are mountains, paths, beaches, lagoons. The temperature gets people up and they can stay outside late into the night," Behar said.
"Cariocas go to the beach to sunbathe, but it's also to play sport and to have fun with friends and family."
