RIO DE JANEIRO — All that separated Brazilians unable to afford a ticket and a local Olympic hero was a thin wire fence. Young girls screamed with delight as they snapped selfies. An old man cried, raising a thumb of approval toward heaven.
The object all this affection is a man named Alison. His family name is Cerutti, but no bona fide sports star in Brazil needs more than a first name. He talks smack like an NBA star. He is built like a bear, a 6-foot, 8-inch bear. He is a star of beach volleyball, as much a staple of daily life in Rio as rice and beans.
On Monday, Alison did something that made his countrymen go crazy with pride. He and partner Bruno Schmidt kicked sand in the face of Americans Phil Dalhausser and Nick Lucena during a match won in three sets, with a berth in the Olympic tournament semifinals as his sweet reward.
“It was like winning a championship for me,” Alison said, “because we beat a great, great team. It was the best of games.”
These Games have made it obvious that the top two sports in Brazil are: 1) Futebol, the unofficial state religion, and 2) Booing athletes made in the USA.
Heck, even Simone Biles, the U.S. gymnast who won bronze Monday on the balance beam, has been heckled by raucous sporting public that has sung, danced and booed at Olympic venues across this big, flawed, beautiful and boisterous city.
“The game is a party and booing is a normal game thing,” 28-year-old Rio native Danielle Pereira told the Toronto Globe and Mail. “That is not disrespectful, this is part of our culture, itap for fun.”
What the Brazilian sports fan has against Americans, other than our annoying insistence on punctuality the locals derisively call English time, is we have won 72 Olympics medals, while the home team has taken home eight. We are the team the hosts love to hate.
Before every serve by Dalhausser or Lucena, 800 fans in the arena on Copacabana Beach waved U.S. flags and the other 9,000 whistled and howled loyalty for Brazil, as 50 mph winds came howling off the ocean. Alison exhorted the crowd with fist pumps and knocked over his foes with spikes so hard they left five-day bruises.
“Home-court advantage? Sure,” Dalhausser said. “Alison feeds off that energy. In my opinion, he was the best player on the court.”
