Edenia Nogueira Garcia

Started: She began swimming at age seven in physical education class in Crato, Brazil. She then moved to Natal, Brazil, where she took up swimming as part of her rehabilitation therapy for Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. She began training for Para swimming in 2000 in Natal, Brazil. (Athlete, 02 Dec 2017; brasildefatoce.com.br, 21 Mar 2022; midianinja.org, 28 Aug 2021) Reason: She became aware of Para sport after her father met Brazilian Para swimmer Francisco Avelino while working as a bus driver in Brazil. "By coincidence, my father picked up a young man, Francisco Avelino, who got on the bus wearing a Brazilian national team shirt. He told my father that he was training for the 2000 Paralympic Games." (midianinja.org, 28 Aug 2021; Athlete, 02 Dec 2017; caixa.gov.br, 10 Nov 2017) Ambition: To compete at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris. (brasildefatoce.com.br, 21 Mar 2022) Awards: She was selected to carry the Olympic torch through Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, as part of the relay ahead of the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro. (Facebook page, 03 May 2016) In 2010 she was named Female Para Athlete of the Year by the Brazilian Olympic Committee. (brasplasticos.blogspot.com, 18 Dec 2010) Additional Info: EARLY DAYS She says taking up Para swimming helped give her the self-confidence to accept her impairment and begin using a wheelchair more regularly. "We always chose a house that was close to both my school and my physiotherapy place, because I already had difficulty walking. I fell a lot. I easily lost my balance and ended up falling. I always say that swimming came as a form of identification, of getting to know myself as a person with a disability, as a human being. I knew it was something different, we didn't say I had a disability or anything like that, and only when I started swimming and meeting other people did I start to hear words like quadriplegic, paraplegic, amputee, blind. So, I started to live with other people that I identified with, with people who used wheelchairs and at that time, for me, it was unthinkable to go around in a wheelchair. So, after spending so much time with each other I made the decision to switch to a wheelchair as a safer and more free alternative." (brasildefatoce.com.br, 21 Mar 2022) OTHER ACTIVITIES She has written a regular column for the sport news website 'ESPN Women in Brazil'. In 2020 she was elected president of supervisory board of the Brazilian Paralympic Committee. Her term is from 2021 to 2024. (ge.globo.com, 30 Nov 2020; Facebook page, 23 Nov 2018; LinkedIn profile, 22 Sep 2023)