Thiago Pereira
Thiago Pereira at the Pan American Games in 2007 in Rio de Janeiro to the individual title over 200m medley
Thiago Machado Vilela Pereira ( born January 26, 1986 in Volta Redonda ) is a Brazilian swimmer. He lives in Belo Horizonte.
Life
The first time attention to themselves Pereira made when, as a seventeen- year-old won the silver medal in the 200m individual medley at the Pan American Games in Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic in 2003. A year later he had arrived in the world rankings and was able to record his biggest success to date at the Short Course World Championships in 2004 in Indianapolis. He managed to win the 200m individual medley. In addition, he managed in individual and team competition complete the set of medals.
At the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, he was a member of the Brazilian team and swam 200m individual medley finals, where he finished fifth. Pereira's so far the most successful competition were the Pan American Games in 2007 in his native Rio de Janeiro. He was victorious in six of eight contests, for which he was listed and obtained in the other two the silver and the bronze medal. He was not only the most successful athletes in the Games, but also broke the decades- old record of Mark Spitz, who won in 1967 at the Pan American Games in Winnipeg five times. This outstanding performance bearing in mind he was called Thiago Pereira for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games in Beijing in the Brazilian squad. There he came again in the final of the 200 layers and improved with regard to Athens to fourth place. In 2010 he became the first South American to the swimming World Cup - in a total of 119 evaluated races he scored 19 victories. His outstanding success of 2007, Pereira repeat at the Pan American Games 2011 in Guadalajara, Mexico again with six gold medals.
He qualified then for the 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London. There he settled on the first day of competition in the final of the 400 meters individual medley defending champion Michael Phelps behind him, leveled his South record and won behind Ryan Lochte the silver medal. Fewer days later he reached about half the distance, as it did in Beijing, ranked fourth.
International Records
On November 18, 2007 Pereira presented in Berlin with 1:53,14 minutes 200m individual medley a new short course world record when he smashed the previous one, more than one and a half -year-long record of U.S. American Ryan Lochte by 17 hundredths. Not even a month later but lost the record again to the Hungarian László Cseh.