VIDEO | He doesn’t have an arm, but he is so strong that he will compete in both the Paralympics and the Olympics

The story of the Brazilian table tennis champion Bruna Alexandre

ROMA – Bruna Alexandre doesn’t have a right arm. A blood clot took him away when he was just a few months old. He started playing table tennis at seven years old. At the Rio 2016 Paralympics he won two bronze medals, at Tokyo 2020 a silver in singles and a bronze in teams. Now she is 29 years old and in Paris she will do an encore: she is so strong that the Brazilian federation asked her to compete in both the Paralympics and the Olympic Games. He trains with skateboarding and futsal to improve balance and coordination. She is the first Brazilian in history. A story of broken boundaries, dissolved mental barriers. Rematches.

She is not the first ever to make the “leap”: the Polish Natalya Partyka and the Australian Melissa Tapper had already succeeded in her sport, between Beijing 2008, London 2012 and Rio. There is the somewhat different precedent of the Croatian Sandra Paovic, who had participated in the 2008 Olympics before suffering a spinal injury in a road accident, and returning to competitive sports – winning gold – at the Paralympics in 2016.

But obviously the examples that more than any other have undermined every degree of separation between sport and disability are Oscar Pistorius and the swimmer Natalie du Toit.

“I am very happy to have the opportunity to represent all Brazilians with disabilities at the Olympic Games and to demonstrate that I can play on equal terms with any athlete,” said Alexandre. “I have a dream of becoming a Paralympic champion, and playing against athletes without disabilities makes me stronger in pursuing this goal.”