When he was preparing for his last stunt on the floor of the Olympic Arena in Rio de Janeiro, Brazilian gymnast Diego Hypolito, 30, felt he was going back in time.

He was carried back to the final of the floor exercises of the Beijing Olympic Games and at the time, he was at the top of his career – he only needed to finish a sequence of leaps to finish first for the gold medal. He flew and fell on his bottom.

Nevertheless he ran, did his final move and celebrated as if he had won a medal. Soon we would have the medal around his neck.

The silver medal tops the comeback of one of the most important Brazilian gymnasts. Hypolito, who fell on his bottom in Beijing 2008, and on his face in London 2012, but finally landed on his feet in the Rio 2016 Olympics.

"I am not as good now as I was in the other Olympics and I managed to get a medal. That is impossible to explain," said Hypolito.

He was the second gymnast to perform and had to watch, one by one, six other athletes do their routines to know which of the medals he would take. The wait nearly made him pass out.

"I started to feel dizzy and I thought I was going to faint. I thought: 'I can't embarrass myself here!'"

The beginning of Hypolito's Olympic career was complicated. He fought depression in 2013 after he left Flamengo club and was forced to move to São Paulo. He lost ten kilos, stopped practicing, and was even hospitalized.

At the age of thirty, he is no longer a boy and suffered with problems in his back, which made him cancel his participation in the 2015 Pan American Games.

This year, Hypolito saw his coach, Fernando de Carvalho Lopes, removed from the national team following accusations of sexual abuse. Hypolito finally found refuge under the wings of Marcos Goto, the coach of Olympic gold medalist Arthur Zanetti.

"Zanetti was an inspiration and Goto deserves that medal. He told me that I could do it while others said it was impossible."

Translated by THOMAS MUELLO

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	Geraldo Bubniak/AGB /Folhapress
	Brazil's Arthur Mariano (L) and Brazil's Diego Hypolito celebrate after the men's floor event final of the Artistic Gymnastics at the Olympic Arena during the Rio 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro