BRAZIL: BOBSLEIGING: Brazilian bobsleigh team aiming for 'Better Than Gold' at the Winter Olympic

Record ID: 332093

  • Title: BRAZIL: BOBSLEIGING: Brazilian bobsleigh team aiming for 'Better Than Gold' at the Winter Olympic
  • Date: 10th February 2006
  • Summary: ERIC MALESON AND LISA PAPANDREA STANDING TOGETHER
  • Embargoed: 25th February 2006 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Brazil
  • Country: Brazil
  • Topics: Sports
  • Reuters ID: LVACFCS1VH5QVJJC4HGVUT5N9C9P
  • Story Text: When Eric Maleson won a few thousand dollars in the
    Brazilian lottery in the late 1980s, he decided to spend
    them on a trip to the United States to learn English.
    Around the same period, in a small town in
    Massachusetts, Lisa Papandrea told herself it was time to
    change her life and flee her violent husband.
    Almost 20 years later, the two have pulled together the
    first ever Brazilian bobsleigh team and are attending their
    second Winter Olympics, having married at the Salt Lake
    City Games.
    The teams are wearing their colours proudly - all 6 of
    them had SouthTyrollian-styled suits made for them which
    they will wear at the opening ceremony on Friday.
    They were designed by an Italian, Michi Klemera, from
    the Luis Trenker house. Although it was Trenker who offered
    to design their costumes Lisa says they were happy to
    accept because Trenker himself was an extraordinary
    character whose long career spanned across several
    disciplines including film making, architecture and, most
    important of all, adventure.
    Eric says it was adventure that led him to bobsleigh
    and to his wife.
    He arrived in the United States in winter and his new
    friends kept encouraging him to take on winter sports. As
    soon as he saw bobsleigh he said it was the one for him. He
    was hooked
    Bobsleighs reach speeds of up to 100 km per hour.
    His wife fully supports him but she can't help worrying
    about him.
    Eric has had several accidents two of them serious. He
    says he was knocked unconscious in Austria when he broke
    his chin on curve 9. His team mate and breakman Armando
    Santos had to hold him back to make sure he didn't break
    anything else on the way down.
    He now has two titanium pins holding together his
    fractured chin and some ruptured ligaments in his knee that
    still await surgery.
    As a result he is not taking part in thie Turin
    Olympics but he believes he may compete in the 2010 games.
    Its the first time Brazil has a team in the bobsleigh
    event.
    Winter sports are not traditional to the tropical
    country where people are more used to shedding their
    clothes for the carnival than piling them on to throw snow
    at each other.
    But Maleson was so inspired that he founded a winter
    sports organisation and became the president of Brazil's
    ice sports.
    He found his team in Brazil. His frist recruit was a
    Brazilian friend, Ricardo Raschini, who delivered pizzas in
    the Boston area.
    Raschini is now the pilot for the four-man team in
    Turin, while Maleson himself is not competing this time due
    to various injuries.
    Maleson also tapped Brazil's athletic community for his
    emerging ice sports organisation, turning weight lifters
    and runners into speed skaters and skeleton pilots.
    The Turin bobsled team includes a decathlete, a discus
    thrower and a hammer thrower.
    The Brazilians are friendly with the Jamaican bobsleigh
    team, and their stories have some parallels -- both make
    unlikely winter athletes, and the Jamaican experience was
    turned into a Hollywood film, entitled "Cool Runnings."
    Maleson and Palandrea are also planning a movie. But
    they point out that while the Jamaicans only have a bobsled
    team, their own plans go beyond the steel-and-ice track.
    Maleson wants Brazil to become a force to reckon with
    at the Winter Olympics, churning out ice sports stars.
    The couple want to turn their story into a film. The
    have already signed a contract with a producer and found
    Rodrigo Santoro to play Eric's part.
    They have no leading lady yet but Lisa says she'd love
    Marisa Tomei to play her.
    It would be called 'Better than Gold'
    No wonder Papandrea wants to turn their story into a
    film.
    The couple met and fell in love in Scituate,
    Massachusetts, where Maleson worked at the catering
    business of Papandrea's stepmother to bolster his lottery
    money.
    Papandrea divorced her husband, settled down with the
    tall, quietly-spoken Brazilian, and both continued working
    in restaurants -- until Maleson discovered bobsleigh
    racing.
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