Athletico 100 years: Lolô Cornelsen, the architect

No list of extraordinary athletes would be complete without Ayrton “Lolô” Cornelsen. Architect and troublemaker, Lolô was a champion player in 1945. Lolô designed the club’s most beautiful badge. Lolô slapped Major Couto Pereira in the face at a carnival dance. Lolô thought of PAVOC, which, after wild twists and turns, ended up being a very important asset for Athletico’s asset consolidation in the 1990s.

Above all, Lolô was an incomparable, brilliant, unrepeatable figure in the human landscape of Curitiba. Born in 1922, like his brothers, he was born supporting another team in the city, but as a teenager he realized he was in the wrong crowd and went to play football and basketball for Athletico. A natural athlete, he also played water polo and ran track and field. And he didn’t shy away from a fight.

In the 1940s, he started to play for the aspiring team Athletico and, in 1945, he was the starting left-back of the main team that won a heroic championship, decided in a legendary best-of-three Atletibas. The victory of the final game – which Lolô played in sacrifice, with a broken arm – came with a goal in extra time at the opponent’s home.

A year earlier, he had changed his CAP badge. Instead of being triangular, with horizontal stripes and a CAP on the upper side, he designed more stylized, thicker and intertwined letters that were the basis of the shield used until 2018. The same ones were also used in the small concrete monument on the ramp that gave access to the old Low bricks that anyone who saw it won’t forget.

Already in the autumn of his life, the man who designed dozens of race tracks around the world, invented the gravel box and the panoramic elevator, had to overcome a small regret for not having been invited to participate in any construction project for the new Arena. Intelligent as he was, he overcame and remained a fanatical athlete until he passed away at the age of 97, very well lived.

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