João Carlos de Oliveira

This article is about the athlete João Carlos de Oliveira. For other people, see João Carlos Oliveira .

João Carlos de Oliveira (born May 28, 1954 in Pindamonhangaba São Paulo , † May 29, 1999 in São Paulo ) was a Brazilian athlete . With a height of 1.86 m, his competition weight was 76 kg. From 1975 to 1985 he held the world record in triple jump with 17.89 meters . This width has only been exceeded eleven times since then (2018).

João do Pulo (João the jumper; literally: "from the jump" or "from jumping"), as he was called in Brazil, stood as a long jumper and above all as a triple jumper in the tradition of the two-time Olympic champion Adhemar Ferreira da Silva and Nelson Prudêncio . With two Olympic medals, four victories in the Pan American Games and three victories in the World Cup for athletes, he is one of the most successful track and field athletes that Brazil has ever produced.

Career

In his youth, João Carlos de Oliveira was a talented high jumper who reached a top height of 1.85 meters. In the triple jump he improved from 14.67 meters (1972) to 15.74 meters (1973) and 16.34 meters (1974). In the 1975 season he had improved to 16.74 meters. At the Pan American Games in Mexico City , he won the long jump with 8.19 meters in front of Arnie Robinson from the USA, who came second to 7.94 meters. On October 15, 1975 in the triple jump final de Oliveira jumped 17.89 meters and improved the world record of Viktor Sanejew of the Soviet Union by 45 centimeters and the Brazilian national record of Nelson Prudêncio by 62 centimeters. Of course, de Oliveira won the competition, while Prudêncio narrowly missed the bronze medal as fourth in the competition, but was more than a meter behind the new world record. De Oliveira was temporarily coached by the German Manfred Letzelter .

In the run-up to the 1976 Olympic Games in Montreal, de Oliveira suffered from back problems and was not at his best in Montreal. With 8.00 meters he was fifth in the long jump, which Arnie Robinson won. In the triple jump final, one day later, he won bronze for 16.90 meters, while Sanejew won his third Olympic gold in a row.

In 1977 in Düsseldorf the World Cup of athletes was held for the first time, and de Oliveira won the triple jump with 16.68 meters. In the summer of 1978 de Oliveira succeeded in Bratislava with 17.44 meters, the second best jump of his career and the setting of the best lowland distance of Saneyev. In 1979 he won the long jump with 8.18 meters and the triple jump with 17.27 meters at the Pan American Games in San Juan . Second in the triple jump was the American Willie Banks , who was to dethrone de Oliveira as the world record holder in 1985. João's younger brother Francisco Carlos de Oliveira was sixth. In Montreal at the second World Cup for athletes, João Carlos de Olivera won 17.02 meters.

From the Soviet point of view, the triple jump final at the 1980 Olympic Games in Moscow should definitely result in a victory for the jumpers from the Soviet Union, one hoped for a fourth Olympic victory for Saneyev. Instead, the Estonian Jaak Uudmäe, who also started for the Soviet Union, won with 17.35 meters ahead of Sanejew with 17.24 meters and de Olivera with 17.22 meters, the Briton Keith Connor jumped 16.87 meters in fourth and the Australian Ian Campbell becomes Listed as fifth with 16.72 meters. Australian and Brazilian journalists, however, questioned some judges' decisions. Regular attempts by Campbell and de Oliveira were given invalid. According to investigations by the Australian television team, de Oliveira should actually have won with approx. 17.70 meters of gold and Campbell with approx. 17.40 meters of silver.

In 1981 de Olivera also won the third World Cup for athletes with 17.37 meters in Rome.

In December 1981, João Carlos de Oliveira was the victim of a traffic accident when a drunk driver drove into his car. The driver involved in the accident and João's brother Francisco died, João was in a clinic for months and ultimately his right leg had to be amputated below the knee.

After the sudden end of his sporting career, João Carlos de Oliveira went into politics, but increasingly suffered from depression, which he fought with alcohol. One day after his 45th birthday, he succumbed to liver disease.

Top performances

• Long jump: 8.36 meters (1979)
• Triple jump: 17.89 meters (1975)

literature

• Manfred Holzhausen: world records and welding record holder. Triple jump / pole vault. Grevenbroich 2002
• Peter Matthews (Ed.): Athletics 2000. Surbiton 2000, ISBN 1-899807-07-1
• Ekkehard zur Megede : The Modern Olympic Century 1896–1996. Track and Field Athletics. German Society for Athletics Documentation eV, Neuss 1999.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Prof. Dr. Manfred Letzelter celebrates his 80th birthday. In: German Association for Sports Science. January 6, 2020, accessed August 20, 2020 .