Edinanci finds new life as a judo teacher – 7/1/2023 – Sport

It’s easy for Edinanci Silva, 46, to choose the best day of his life. It was just after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the morning after the decision to no longer compete at a high level in judo.

“You wake up early and think: I can sleep late, I can eat what I want. I don’t have time to go to the gym. I can train if I want, when I want, without worrying about anything. that’s when I started,” he recalls.

The first Brazilian judoka to participate in four Olympic editions likes to compare the phases of her career to stages of the sun. Ending his career was like tramonto. From mild to cold. It could be the beginning of a new learning curve. Quite different from the madness of competitions and the obsession with medals. “This is the midday sun. Hot. Unbearable,” she defines.

Edinanci broke paradigms, caused controversy and suffered prejudice. Bronze at the world championships in Paris (1997) and Osaka (2003), he discovered that he was intersex, a characteristic present in about 2% of the world’s population, before the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. She had male and female morphological features.

In addition to female organs, she had internal testicles that produced testosterone, a male hormone that made her stronger.

She still remembers the prejudice she suffered, how her case was debated in the press in a way that until today she considers sensational. How much her parents suffered.

“I was prevented from competing in 1995, from participating in an event, because athletes mobilized and wrote a letter to prohibit me from being present. I see stories similar to mine and I feel as if it were me”, he says.

Although the case is different, she found herself in the prejudice suffered by Tiffany Abreu, the first trans volleyball player to compete in the Superliga, the main national championship of the modality. She feels the same when following, through the press, similar situations of international athletes.

“The internal conflict may not show on your face because you always have to be smiling, you can’t show it because, otherwise, it sinks. Everything goes down the drain, and the people who want to see you like that vibrate. All that’s left for us to do is react and fight to change . I think, in a way, I helped to change that.”

To go to the Atlanta Games, he underwent surgery to remove his testicles and uterus.

Edinanci still sees life from the perspective of a sportswoman. But not as a top-level athlete. After almost four years without even watching judo competitions on TV, she found herself as a children’s instructor. She transmits her knowledge in the martial arts project of fellow judoka Thiago Camilo in Heliópolis, in the southeast region of the city of São Paulo.

A little over a month ago, he was at Sesc 24 de Maio, in downtown São Paulo, in the programming of the 29th edition of Dia do Desafio, a worldwide campaign for the practice of physical activities and the fight against a sedentary lifestyle. He spent the day teaching, which he likes to do most nowadays. It is the path you intend to follow.

“Those who live in high income are concerned with the main objective, which is the result. The philosophical part is ignored. That only comes later. you start to think: if I had applied all of this in my time as an athlete, the results could have been different. Because you are so focused on the competition, on the demands, on the fans, on the sponsors… And you demand too much from yourself.”

Edinanci was at the 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008 Olympics. In the last one, he obtained his best result, fifth place. Before the 2021 Paralympic Games, in Tokyo, he was a sparring partner for the visually impaired Brazilians who would compete in the modality, a transformative experience.

“I’ve trained with athletes who manage to put together a fight strategy just by listening. They notice if breathing is labored, if not, and that’s why they find out if the opponent is nervous, tired, and they know how to differentiate that. That for me is a huge learning experience, put the judo techniques without having the vision, just visualizing in the mind.”

Restarting the sport meant, for Edinanci, getting rid of his ego. Forget the time when she was the center of attention, the sportswoman in search of glory. It was harder than it might seem. If the first few days after retiring from high-level competition were a dream, her body started to pick up the tab two months later. As if she wouldn’t accept a new sedentary and undisciplined routine. She wasn’t used to this.

She began to wake up at 5 am and think: it’s time.

“What time is it?” he asked himself.

The body asked for a return to the habit of lifting weights, going to the mat, doing repetitive exercises. This was the hardest part: finding new meaning in life. Transmitting Judo teachings to children gave him that.

“I had to find another meaning for something that I thought would last forever”, he recalls.

The other instructors told the children at Sesc 24 de Maio who she was. She was one of the most important judokas in the country’s history. Someone who also broke barriers outside the mats, even if it was suffered. If the absence of an Olympic medal is a frustration, Edinanci knows how positive her professional career has been.

“Now I want peace of mind to transmit all this knowledge and experience. I come from a simple family and I was unable to have a formal education. My generation, who came from the interior of Paraíba, did not have the chance to go to school, even if it was a public. So, I learned to value everything I built in judo. I acquired a lot of knowledge to pass on. I think this is what I know how to do best and it is what I will continue to do.”