Brazil has some of the most beautiful men in the world. Some of them are swimmers. The guy below, Edvaldo Valério Silva Filho ("o Bala"), a swimmer from Bahia in the Brazilian northeast, won a bronze at the 2000 Olympics in the 4x100 freestyle race. His teammate Gustavo Borges has been Brazil's major swimmer for the last half-decade, but o Bala has come on strong. I hope they televise him in the Pan-American games, which are in the Dominican Republic next year.

I've been meaning to move to Brazil.

Dominican men are no slouches either. I remember young kids diving off rocky river banks as soon as they could walk.

How did they know where the underwater rocks were?

Generally one of them would smash some body part against one and the others would avoid that spot.

I'm sure there were a few deaths but it wouldn't deter those little tigres (daredevils) for long.

Tragic waste of potentially beautiful manhood.

It'll be interesting to see if the DR enters in swimmers in competition at Pan Am games. Brazil's much wealthier--Bahia is a huge but poor state in Brazil, but the national swimming federation has some $$ to work with--and I'm always surprised that it doesn't field even more outstanding swimmers given its vast coastline and many lakes, and its well-funded sports programs in the center and south of the country. On a Brazilian swimming site I just came across, hundreds of kids turned out to get Valério's autograph, and he's become a hero and role model (not least because he's the first self-identified Afro-Brazilian to win a medal in swimming), leading many kids in the northeast to take up the sport. I guess it's like hockey in this country--the more kids see hotties, uh, I mean players like Jamal Mayers and Anson Carter, the more they'll say, hey, I might like to try that sport too.

The other guys on the Brazilian swimming team were incredibly handsome too. I should try to find pictures of Borges, Xuxa (I love the single name--we ought to try that in the U.S.), and the rest of them.

Oh, and as of a few years ago, Valério/O Bala was still a bachelor. (In an online chat, he professed to the belief that he didn't even know he was considered attractive!)

Okay--here's another guy, Fabiano Machado da Silva, who's from the south of Brazil (Curitiba). He also was on another winning 4x100 team--the Para-Olympic Brazilian swimming squad--in Sydney. Here he is with some handsome guy (Borges?), and then with o Bala.



[ March 18, 2002: Message edited by: fantomas ]