Thiago Pereira

Thiago Pereira
Thiago Pereira at the Pan American Games 2007 in Rio de Janeiro after the individual title over 200 m medley
Personal information
Surname:	Thiago Machado Vilela Pereira
Nation:	Brazil
Swimming style (s) :	Back, chest, layers, freestyle
Society:	Minas Tênis Club
Birthday:	January 26, 1986
Place of birth:	Volta Redonda
Size:	1.87 m
Weight:	84 kg
Medal table

Thiago Machado Vilela Pereira (born January 26, 1986 in Volta Redonda ) is a Brazilian swimmer. He lives in Belo Horizonte .

Life

Pereira first drew attention to himself when he won the silver medal in the 200 meter medley at the Pan American Games in Santo Domingo , the capital of the Dominican Republic , in 2003 at the age of seventeen . Just one year later he was among the best in the world and was able to record his greatest success to date at the 2004 Short Course World Championships in Indianapolis . He won the 200 meter medley. In addition, he managed to complete the set of medals both individually and with the relay.

At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens , he was a member of the Brazilian team and swam over 200 meters into the final, where he finally finished fifth. Pereira's most successful competition so far was the 2007 Pan American Games in his home country in Rio de Janeiro . He won six out of eight competitions for which he was listed and won the silver and bronze medals in the other two. Not only did he become the Games' most successful athlete, but he also broke the decade-old record set by Mark Spitz , who won five times at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg in 1967 . Taking account of these outstanding achievements, Thiago Pereira was also appointed to the Brazilian squad for the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing . There he reached the final over 200 layers and improved to fourth place with a view to Athens. In 2010 he became the first South American to win the Swimming World Cup - in a total of 119 races, he scored 19 victories. Pereira was able to repeat his outstanding success of 2007 at the Pan American Games 2011 in Guadalajara, Mexico with six gold medals again.

He then qualified for the 2012 Summer Olympics in London . There he left defending champion Michael Phelps behind him in the final over 400 meters on the first day of the competition , equalized his South American record and won the silver medal behind Ryan Lochte . A few days later he reached fourth place over half the distance, as he did in Beijing.

International records

On November 18, 2007, Pereira set a new short course world record in Berlin with 1: 53.14 minutes over 200 meters by breaking the previous record of more than one and a half years from the American Ryan Lochte by 17 hundredths. Less than a month later, however, he lost the record again to the Hungarian László Cseh .

South American Records (7)
200 m freestyle	01: 46.57 min	July 31, 2009	Rome
200 m layers	01: 55.55 min	July 30, 2009	Rome
400 m layers	04: 08.86 min	July 30, 2009	Rome
100 m layers (short course)	00: 52.35 min	September 11, 2010	Rio de Janeiro
200 m layers (short course)	01: 52.72 min	September 12, 2010	Rio de Janeiro
400 m layers (short course)	04: 00.63 min	November 17, 2007	Berlin
4 × 200 m freestyle (short course) (with Castro , Filho and Salatta )	07:06:09 min	April 4, 2006	Shanghai
(As of August 2, 2012)

Web links

• www.thiagopereira.com.br Official website
• Thiago Pereira in the Sports-Reference database (English; archived from the original )