Mayara Rocha: uma história de força e persseverança no esporte

Abstract

This paper seeks to report the sporting trajectory of Mayara Rocha, champion Powerlifting athlete, from the city of Campina Grande, rural Paraíba. To this end, in this qualitative/descriptive/life history study, we seek to understand how her initial sporting experiences influenced her transition to a career in Powerlifting. We explore the training routine of a champion athlete, her strategies for attracting sponsorship and support to maintain her training and competition infrastructure. Furthermore, we recorded the experiences of a woman gaining recognition in a predominantly male sport. To achieve these objectives, semi-structured interviews were conducted with subsequent discourse analysis, supplemented with the survey of documentary records. In the analysis, we used the perspective of the Life History method in order to investigate the process of becoming a reference athlete in her discipline. Through the methodological perspective of the Life History method, we listed analysis categories that were broken down into analysis codes of speech and through these we were able to carry out the research. In her speeches, the athlete presented a path of overcoming gender barriers in sport and especially in strength sports. Like so many athletes in the country, she overcomes the precariousness of resources with self-employment and reports difficulties in receiving adequate financial support as a top athlete. Her trajectory is inspiring given the athlete's relevance to the local and national context of Powerlifting and the results obtained allowed greater understanding of the configuration of the sport in Brazil.