Marcos Vinicius de Oliveira

Reason: He discovered Para sports through an institute for visually impaired people in Jaguare, Brazil. He practised both goalball and Para athletics until 2016, when he decided to focus solely on athletics. "When I ran for the first time I didn't know what athletics was. A friend said to me, 'Go and run!' I did and I liked it. I ended up sticking with it." (cpb.org.br, 01 Dec 2023; folhavitoria.com.br, 08 Oct 2023) Additional Info: ATHLETICS COUPLE He began dating fellow Brazilian Para athletics competitor Lorraine Gomes de Aguiar in 2016. "I have told him not to speak about athletics when we are at home. I say to go and watch a film, a TV series, but after half an hour we are talking about what we did in training, about what went wrong and what went right. There's no way around it. We live sport," said Aguiar. "The good thing is that we help each other in everything, for example in following our diet. There's no way we don't speak about athletics all day long. Even at home," he said. (folhavitoria.com.br, 08 Oct 2023)

Sporting Relatives: His partner Lorraine Gomes de Aguiar is also a Para athletics competitor. She represented Brazil at the world championships in 2023 and 2024, winning three medals at the 2024 edition of the tournament in Kobe, Japan. (SportsDeskOnline, 30 Jul 2024; folhavitoria.com.br, 08 Oct 2023)