The drive to instil a stronger national sport policy in Brazil ahead of the 2016 Rio Olympics (and, to a lesser extent the 2014 World Cup) continues unabated with a group of the country’s most well known athletes launching a push to encourage greater and fairer access to sport in schools and municipalities, including a major improvement in Brazil’s sporting infrastructure.
Ex-footballer Raí Oliveira, volleyballers Ida and Ana Moser, basketballer Magic Paula and middle distance runner Joaquim Cruz, all part of the not-for-profit group Athletes for Citizenship, met with sport minister Orlando Silva through the week and delivered a statement about the need to ‘democratise’ sport in public schools and city councils through a revision of the country’s National Sport System and significantly increased government investment in the area.
Using recent figures compiled in a study of Brazilian municipalities, the group highlighted some quite startling statistics concerning sport in Brazil:
- Of Brazil´s 140,867 public schools only 12% have sporting facilities of any type
- Only 7.4% of Brazil´s municipalities have public sporting complexes, 67% of these in the south-east part of the country
- Sporting competitions exist in 78.4% of Brazil´s municipalities; Amongst these, 95.5% offer football competitions, 66% Futsal (indoor version of football), 60.5% volleyball and 43.6% athletics, with other sports well below these rates.
Importantly, the document also listed what the athletes consider as key requirements, including:
- guaranteeing the practice of structured sport in all Brazilian schools, with a goal of reaching 100% of schools in 2014 World Cup host cities by 2014 and 80% of all Brazilian schools by 2016.
- increasing and diversifying the types of public sporting equipment available, aiming to double the current average rate of sport participation in the country
- integrating high performance and social sport into the educational system
- providing added opportunities for professional athletes in terms of higher education and alternative careers