As the Winter Olympics 2022 are celebrated in Beijing, many Latinxs athletes represent our communities and countries while breaking barriers and aiming for gold medals.
Donovan Carrillo, a Mexican figure skater, proudly represents his town of Guadalajara. Donovan had always been told from a young age to pursue soccer since attempting to practice a winter sport in Guadalajara seemed unreal. However, Donovan strengthened his skills by going through the challenging obstacle of not having a proper rink to practice. Through his strong perseverance, Donovan was able to amaze the world with a career-best performance at Capital Indoor Stadium, featuring a “well-executed quad toe loop and difficult triple axel” (Ho 2022). This allowed him to advance to the longer free skate competition, an accomplishment that hasn’t been seen from a Mexican figure skater in over three decades.
Sarah Escobar is a young freshman at Saint Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont who has represented her parents’ home country Ecuador as an alpine skier. Ever since she was 3, Sarah has strived to perform excellently in her education and skiing. Escobar not only has the honor of being the first student from Saint Michael’s to represent them at the Olympic Games, but she will go down in history as the first woman to compete as a representative of Ecuador in the Winter Olympics (Mikrut 2022).
Edson Bindilatti had never seen snow before becoming one of Brazil’s finest bobsledders. In 1999, he was a decathlete who dreamed of representing his country at the Olympics. Eric Maleson, considered one of the first to represent Brazil in winter sports, approached Bindilatti to participate in the bobsled team. Ever since then, Edson has participated in four Olympics and will join in Beijing alongside Erick Gilson Vianna Jeronimo, Rafael Souza da Silva and Edson Ricardo Martins (Sandoval 2022).
The Olympics is a time of celebrating athletes who have cemented themselves as the best of the best and cheering on the up and coming rising stars from across the world. With so many new Latinx athletes ready to impress the world, this Olympic season is worthy of being written in the history books.
Works Cited
Ho, Sally. “Mexican Skater is a Rare Latin American at Winter Olympics.” AP News, 9 February 2022, https://apnews.com/article/winter-olympics-figure-skating-donovan-carrillo-e7de894bb834db2224929c88a358f197
Sandoval, Ana. “Beijing Olympics 2022: Latinx Athletes to Look Out For.” Latina, 4 February 2022, https://latina.com/beijing-olympics-2022-latino-athletes-to-look-out-for/
Mikrut, Kayci. “Saint Michael’s Freshman Represents Ecuador as Lone Olympian in Beijing.” NCAA, 3 February 2022, https://www.ncaa.org/news/2022/2/3/features-saint-michaels-freshman-represents-ecuador-as-lone-olympian-in-beijing.aspx
