Cape Verde: Stolen gold olympic medal
Written byPaula Góes
Abraão Vicente [pt] on the son of Cape Verde who won a gold medal for Portugal: “Nelson Évora won the gold medal and he is Portuguese. That is it. Did you see any little Cape Verde flag, if he took some symbol to express his Creole tribute? No? I didn't. Let us stop it. Yes, it would beautiful if he had run with national colours, but let's be honest: even if he was really from Cape Verde, with the great encouragement for sports that exists in this country, he would have at most won… not sure, maybe the Saint Silvester Road Race.”
Written byPaula Góes
3 comments
Most Cape Verdeans don’t like to be considered Africans. Its a shame that an African diss his country’s pride over some stupid Gold.
All of the global community of Cape Verdeans should be proud of Mr. Evora for winning his medal. The fact that he competed for Portugal and not Cape Verde is of no significance. Many many athletes from all over the world compete for other countries that can provide better sponsorships, financial support and other opportunitiies, etc. This is not about not wanting to be what he is not. We Cape Verdeans are like the Indians and the Chinese: many of us live and succeed in the diaspora around the world. We are Americans, Canadians, Portuguese, Angolans, Senegalese, Brazilians, etc but we are all Cape Verdean people.
Evora relocated to Portugal when he was 5 years old…which means that he can hardly feel cape-verdean as a national and social identity. If he grew up in Portugal from his childhood so he is Portuguese. This shows that Portugal should be ashamed of letting one of its kids outside the portuguese nationality untill 2004, he should have had the portuguese nationality when he reached 18 years old.
Nevertheless because of its origins, he can still be praised by cape-verdeans all around the world.