Paul Camacho won at the cost of much personal sacrifice the title of best Portuguese swimmer of the generation of 1970. Attended the Olympic Games in Seoul and he has an enviable winnings as an athlete of high competition that much dignify the national sport and above all Madeira.
How do you arrive at the Olympics?
Paul Camacho: Training a lot that is how you get to this kind of events.
In the late eighties, felt the inherent difficulties of living on an island?
PC: It was difficult, there is an aspect to take into account, in 1988, we were more isolated, although there was a strong government support. I trained alone, human resources were not adequate, despite having the best coach in the world at the time, we were further apart than today.
Isolates in that way, what distinguished you from a swimmer on the mainland?
PC: It was much easier to go to Spain to the central performance in Madrid or Barcelona, and do internships in 50 meter pools. For us it was more difficult because we had to move to Lisbon and this made it difficult to do the trainings.
So how you filed this inefficiency?
PC: Well, I think it was a bit of talent, persistence, dedication and hard work. I trained for five hours a day, two hours of the morning, an hour of gym and the remaining in the afternoon. I sacrificed a few things, the school naturally; social life for third or fourth plane and so was the swimming back then.
What you felt at your first Olympics?
PC: Firstly a huge joy to have been the first to be in the games from Madeira, although there was another in the twenties who was also present at this event and then was a relief, it was like putting a flag on the summit of the Everest. It was a mixture of emotions.
Throughout the trials you felt that the fact of being in the island somehow harmed?
PC: Yes, I seemed lost, then I gained a lot weight because in the months that I was there many vending machines scattered around the venue, the Olympic village had restaurants open 24 hours a day and I got 3 or 4 more pounds, was 17 years old, did 18 years in the games in August. I was green and immature, so it did not go well. I think that was one of the main obstacles that prevented me from getting a better performance in Seoul.
But after these results even weak, there was not a positive feedback?
PC: Yes, we tried to create a high performance center , because it was said that the previous model of training was not the most appropriate, with psychologists, nutritionists and teachers, but I could not take advantage of these resources, I didn't went well. At the time, my coach, Professor Andrew Escorcio was a very dynamic person and managed a number of innovative things to Madeira.
It did not work for the whole team?
PC: It did not work with me, because I was unique and could they could not do it with anyone else, because there was no athlete at this level.
But, there were also dedicated athletes?
PC: Yes, I had colleagues who were involved will swim, maybe not as much as I did; the difference is that I won all the trials and we trained the same way. Ronaldo certainly has many colleagues who can kick, pass and do the same type of training, but they do not score so many goals.
What was the difference between Seoul and other games?
PC: I could not go neither to Barcelona nor to games in Atlanta, although I was pre-selected. Much had changed, I remember the flying swimsuits, which have since been banned, but at the time there was a boom and everyone wore these rubber suits began to beat world records, there were technical details that made the difference in terms immense underwater, the methodology of training had also changed.
Now after 25 years, what has changed? Do you notice any improvement, or backing even nationally?
PC: We are served with very good condition; we have many pools, but only Club Nava. and the Olympic in the Penteada are operating. The concept of a pool for a county is not working. Most is closed and there is no money to maintain them, so it is difficult to speak of cycles in Olympic swimming. For many reasons, first, we are a small island, the target population is much reduced, in the case of Funchal, there is about 150 thousand people which is a very small universe and with so many sports. Then we have the phenomenon of Cristiano Ronaldo that induces many, many parents to put their children to learn to play football, which limits this sport, because if we do not have many practitioners we cannot "produce" a champion or two. We wait and see. Swimming is more or less like the wine, which has some good years and not so in others, swimming is the same, is through cycles, we see that when it appears one champ shows up.
But now with all these innovations and new techniques should not they be better?
PC: Maybe they are worse, because the pools are all closed.
Yes, but before there was not an Olympic pool and you trained in cold water.
PC: Yes, it is true, in the pool of matur where the water was not heated up and I have to underline that until Christmas the pool at the Naval Club was open because it is a private institution, despite being of public utility. Therefore, the national and maritime athletes were two or three months without training. In my time, there were still some pools, the water was cold, but never interrupted our activity. About 4 months ago swimming was worse than in years when only practiced in the seawater. I remember last year, we had an athlete Luis Pinto who was also struggling to get into the Olympic Games in London and had to go to the Canaries, both he and his coach, they had to pay out of their own pocket in order to train to achieve the minimum Olympic Games. It's a ridiculous situation, in my day it never happened.
Do you think this happens because although there was a boom in your season, swimming is a poor relation of sport?
PC: In Portugal we have the misfortune of looking at our players as national heroes, even at the last European they were dubbed that way, they took the name of Portugal across borders, what I call crap. They forget that we have many heroes, many people with large capacities both in sport and the arts and how is it that you never hear ministers or politicians calling heroes to these personalities. I remember Souto Moura who won an international award in architecture, our Nobel literature, José Saramago, and then yes we are not the poor relation of the sport, but the nation. Everyone only speaks of Cristiano Ronaldo and the national team. They forget amateur sport, all this to say, we are all poor relations, because only football matters.
What then is the future of swimming or any other sport other than football?
PC: Let's say we follow our path and we have champions, we are a big handicap is that when athletes reach the age where you have to choose, 95% opt for lucky / unlucky to go to the mainland to study. This is to say that we worked with them for about 7 to 8 years, with a young athlete, and then they stopped, because naturally prefer the university. Normally swimmers choose difficult courses and it is hard to reconcile studies with swimming, an activity that is not professional and also a sport in which an athlete has to pay an internship to go training from morning to night. Our only source of income is still swimming lessons for youngsters in schools and also the elderly, since swimming has great potential in these ages, everyone can practice it, since the disabled person to the low mobility person, which gives us flexibility to create funds to try to help the swimmers to travel to Lisbon in internship. Our road is long and is done slowly. It is a journey through the desert.
