When Rafaela Silva applied the waza-ari that earned her the golden medal - the first won by Brazil in this Olympic Games -, Beatriz Lopes, 13, was watching the match at the same gym where the judoka from Rio trained and was discovered: the centre of NGO Instituto Reação, in the City of God slum (Cidade de Deus).

Like the champion, Beatriz was born, raised and became a judoka in the slum of 40,000 inhabitants, eight kilometers from the Olympic Park

"When I saw Rafaela on the podium, I felt that I also can get there," said the judoka, who has won twice the Pan-American Games and once the South American Games.

She was not the only one to be inspired. "I get beaten a lot by Rafaela, but one day I'll be like her," says Ana Karolina Belém, 14, twice champion of the Americas and South America, who occasionally trains with Silva. She plans her debut in Tokyo 2020.

Instituto Reação is a hotbed of athletes that identifies and trains young judokas with Olympic potential.

In total, the NGO has five centers in the city, with 1,250 students -222 of them are high performance athletes. The day after Silva's victory, there was a line of children from the slum wanting to enroll for training.

Ana Karolina Belém exemplifies the routine of a high performance athlete of the institute: she wake up at 5:40 am, goes to a private school - she won a scholarship because of judo -, have lunch and goes to the gym, where she trains until after 9 pm, Monday to Saturday.

Translated by MARINA DELLA VALLE

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	Diego Padgurschi/Folhapress
	The school in Rio attended by Brazilian judo champion Rafaela Silva has other Olympic hopefuls