While a select few of the world’s athletes boast huge contracts, the world of professional sports as a whole has a much direr reality. Once in a while, because of these harsh conditions, we come around a few stories that shows us just how much adaptive power a human being with a dream has. In a sport known to have purses as high as a million dollars, 21 year old Brazilian professional beach volleyball player Allyson Lima found an unusual way to finance his sport dream: by selling sweets and sandwiches to his peers during competition.
Alysson started relatively late at the sport, at 15 years old, but quickly rose up the youth and professional rankings, being a constant presence in most meets of Brazil’s beach volleyball circuit. But financing a career in a sport that involves constant travelling can be a daunting task. Because of that, he elicited the help of his mom to help him prepare common Brazilian sweets, that sell for as little as 50 cents to $1.50 dollars, to complement his income and pay for travelling, hotel, and equipment. He also has ball and uniform raffles occasionally.
While Alysson’s motivation is something to be cheered, it raises questions on Brazil’s support of its youth athletes, only an year removed of it hosting the Olympic Games, as Allyson is one of the country’s top U23 players, and Beach volleyball is mostly government financed. The country certainly boasts the sports brightest stars at the top, but can it continue its dominance if at the youth level things are so far away from that reality?
“Never give up on what you can’t go a single day without thinking about it, no matter what it is”
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