Brazilian success at the Olympic Games
has, in recent times,
been focused on the team events.
Brazilian footballers.
Brazilian volleyball players.
Brazilian footballers.
Brazilian volleyball players.
This Brazilian volleyball team in particular
typify their nation's exuberance,
skill and sophisticated teamwork.
They won back-to-back Olympic gold medals
in Beijing and London.
For the last Brazilian athlete to win consecutive gold medals,
you have to go back to this man.
Adhemar Ferreira da Silva from Brazil.
Born into a poor family in Sao Paulo
in the 1920s,
the son of a railway worker,
he dreamed of representing his home football team Sao Paulo,
until a German athletics coach, Dietrich Gerner,
spotted his athletic talent and pushed Da Silva
towards the triple jump.
Perhaps young Adhemar was too much of an individual
to be a team player, because the triple jump
is the perfect pursuit
for the single-minded athlete.
Sometimes called the hop, skip and jump,
the triple jump featured
in the very first Olympic Games in Athens.
The combination of speed, timing and strength
is hard to co-ordinate -
and easy to get wrong.
The four stages of the triple jump are all important.
The approach is all about speed.
The hop must carry forward the momentum.
The skip sets up the final stage -
the jump, propelling yourself as far forward as you can,
both legs out in front of you for the landing.
It takes a certain kind of athlete,
capable of remarkable fluency and poise.
Aged just 20, Da Silva represented Brazil
at the 1948 Olympic Games in London.
The winner that year was Arne Ahman of Sweden.
Da Silva finished eighth. He was still learning his craft.
He learnt well.
In 1950, he equalled the world record
with a jump of 16 metres,
a mark that had stood since 1936.
A year later, he won the Pan-American championship
and extended the world record to 16.1 metres.
An Olympic gold medal, however, was his key target.
And the 1952 Olympics in Helsinki would see
Da Silva dominate his event.
Firstly, with a jump of 16.12 metres, a new world record.
And then, in the fifth round, where he bettered it again
with a jump of 16.22 metres.
He also passed 16 metres
in two other rounds.
Adhemar Ferreira da Silva not only wins
the hop, step and jump title,
but breaks the world record four times in a row.
When the gold medal was confirmed,
Da Silva gave a lap of honour.
An outstanding Olympic champion,
he receives the enthusiastic tribute of the crowd.
A talented linguist, he taught himself Finnish before
the games and he conversed with the fans
as he went around the stadium.
There was no more popular athlete in track and field.
Ha-ha, Da Silva wins da gold, ha-ha.
You've been working on that one for a while, haven't you?
Ha-ha, hoo-ha, Da Silva wins da gold.
Oh, that's too good.
Da Silva's world record was not to last
and was beaten the following year.
Then came the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne,
and Da Silva was the undisputed world number one.
But he'd face a challenge from an unlikely opponent -
25-year-old Icelander Vilhjalmur Einarsson,
in the second round
of the final, jumped nearly 18 inches further
than he'd ever done before.
A mighty jump of 16.26 metres.
This meant the champion had to dig deep.
Defending champion, 29-year-old Ferreira da Silva.
He appeared slightly rattled
after the Icelander's mighty performance,
and it wasn't until his last three jumps
that Da Silva showed his true greatness.
Yes, 16.35 metres, a new Olympic record
and the gold medal to Brazil's Ferreira da Silva.
And consolation for Einarsson,
his silver was Iceland's
first ever Olympic track and field medal.
Iceland only had two competitors at this games,
and that they should win one medal
is certainly a good effort.
Da Silva, an Olympic legend, was the only Brazilian athlete
to have won gold in two consecutive Olympics
until the 2012 games.
There, the Brazilian women's volleyball squad
defended their title.
Adhemar da Silva died in 2001,
an icon of Brazilian and South American sport.
Today, the Sao Paulo Football Club still wears two gold stars
on their shirts in tribute to their greatest fan.