Cesar Cielo and his athletic career
Cesar Cielo Filho is a professional Brazilian swimmer and was born on the 10th of January, 1987 in Santa Barbara d’ Oeste, Sao Paulo, Brazil. The athlete specialises in sprint races.
So far, Cesar is the most successful and popular swimmer in Brazil’s swimming history and has to his credit a number of medals that he has won in several national and international events including the Olympics. He has won a total of two Olympic gold medals and two gold medals at the World Championships. The Brazilian sprinter has managed to break a world record set by other champions within a time span of less than a year.
At the moment, Cielo is the world record setter in the 100 metre and 50 metre freestyle races. He is the only Brazilian swimmer to have won a gold medal at the Olympic Games at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China in the 50 metre freestyle race.
The Olympics champion started his swimming career in his home state when he was a young teenager. He was under the training of Coach Mario Francisco Sobrinho at the Esporte Clube Barbarense. While he was just 13 years old, Cielo was being trained and coached by Reinaldo Rosa. As he turned 16, he started training under Coach Alberto Silva. The young athlete earned a sports’ scholarship at the Auburn University in America. He is currently training with Australian Coach Brett Hawke. The world champion was given stiff competition by Fernando Scherer in 2008 when he competed for the NCAA National Championships as a candidate for the Auburn Tigers’ Swimming and Diving team.
Right now, the Brazilian swimmer is the holder of the NCAA and U.S. Swimming Championships in the 50 and 100 metre freestyle meets during the 2008 Championships. Cielo managed to win six National Championships events at Auburn in the 50 and 100 metre freestyle races that took place in 2007. Cielo chose to train to become a professional swimmer than to compete for the NCAA.
Cielo has participated in almost all the mega international events since 2007 and has proudly represented Brazil in all these water sport festivals. He was ranked as the sixth best swimmer in the 50 metre freestyle on the 2007 Swimming World Championships that took place in Melbourne. Moreover he was placed at the fourth spot in the same event in the 100 metre freestyle race. Cesar Cielo managed to win three gold medals in the 50 metre, 100 metre and 4 into 100 metre freestyle at the Pan American Games in Rio de Janeiro in 2007.
He further won a silver medal in the Pan American Games in the 4 into 100 metre medley race. In the Summer Olympics Games in Beijing, Ceilo took away the bronze medal in the 100 metre freestyle, giving up his victory to the American athlete Jason Lezak. Ceilo did however set an Olympic world record in the 50 metre freestyle in the semi-finals where he finished the race in 21.34 seconds. Cesar further improved his timings in the finals of the event and won a gold medal by finishing the race in 21.30 seconds. He failed to cross the world record mark by just 0.02 seconds.
The next major world Championships in which Cielo swam was the 2009 World Swimming Championships 2009 that took place in Rome. Cesar won 50 metre and 100 metre freestyle events in these championships. Cesar was the third swimmer to have won these races in the World Championships, the first two being Anthony Ervin and Alexander Popov.
The former athlete and Cielo are the only swimmers who have won the 50 metres races in the Olympics and World Championships in a row. Cielo also managed to overcome the world record mark in the 100 metre freestyle in the World Championships that took place in Rome. The athlete also set a world record in the 50 metre freestyle race which he finished in 20.91 seconds at the event which hosted the club in Brazil where he trained since 2003. Cielo was currently swimming at the Pan Pacific Swimming Championships in Irvine California towards the end of last month.
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