Naide Gomes: Portugal’s Special One

Portugal has had distance runners par excellence for many years but long jumper Naide Gomes has shown the country can produce field event exponents as well. Phil Minshull talked to the two-time European indoor champion.

If you refer to The Special One in Portugal, most people still think you are talking about the football coach Jose Mourinho, now with the English Premiership side Chelsea, after he gave himself that nickname in the wake of back-to-back European triumphs with local side Porto. However, now another Portuguese sports personality is being widely referred to by that accolade.

Long jumper Naide Gomes didn't follow the lead of Mourinho and arrogantly christen herself with that title but instead she had it bestowed on her by the leading Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias.

"A new Special One… Naide Gomes, another feat, what a star, what a woman," hailed the newspaper in extravagant tones after Gomes notched up her second consecutive European Indoor Long Jump title in March.

Gomes won the gold medal in Birmingham with a personal best of 6.89m, the best jump in the world indoors this winter and the best leap ever by a Portuguese woman, whether indoors or out.
In fact, with male stars such as Francis Obikwelu and Rui Silva deciding to give the event a miss in order to prepare for the outdoor season, Gomes was Portugal's only medallist at the championship.

She had been on top of the podium before, such as when she won the Pentathlon at the 2004 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Budapest or after winning her first European Indoor Long Jump title in Madrid two years ago, but seeing the Portuguese flag raised in her honour still brought a lump to her throat.

"I tried to sing the national anthem, just quietly, in low voice just for me, but I had difficulty doing even that because I was feeling so emotional. These are the moments you live for as an athlete. It makes all the hard work and the sacrifices worthwhile."

"Every time I get a medal on a big occasion like this, it is special and this one was especially so, as I went near seven metres, and it was the best mark in the world this year and a national record. Now, my big target is to get a medal at the World Championships in Osaka and jump over seven metres."

One reason for Gomes' optimism about what she can achieve in Japan's second city is that her winning leap at the European Athletics Indoor Championships was further evidence that she can rise to the big occasion. It was a talent she first showed outdoors among the elite jumpers at the European Athletics Championships last summer.

"Gothenburg was great because of my result and I was jumping really strongly but I didn't really enjoy the competition because of the wind and the rain," reflected Gomes, despite jumping her previous lifetime best of a windy 6.84m for the silver medal behind Russia's Lyudmila Kolchanova.

"I train in Lisbon where it is good weather nearly all the year around. I don't even need to train indoors because of the good weather so I hate it when the weather is bad even when I am doing well."

Another reason for Gomes feeling good about her prospects is that lengthy physiotherapy studies are now behind her.

"I competed for Team Europe at the IAAF World Cup last September and then took just a week off at the end of the season before starting studying again for my final exams at the end of last year. At times it seemed like all I was doing was eating, sleeping, training and studying. When people asked me what my interests were and what I did in my spare time, I told them I didn't have any, so it's a bit better now," said the woman whose full name is Enezenaide do Rosario da Vera Cruz Gomes.

Thankfully for stadium announcers and journalists everywhere she has decided to adopt a shortened version. "I am proud of my name but it is a long one, even for Portuguese names, and my family has
actually always called me Naide."

"What persuaded me to shorten my name was when I started getting good at athletics in my late teens. My name was too long even for electronic scoreboards," she joked.

"All that was up there was 'E. Gomes' and there are plenty of people called Gomes in Portugal.  I suppose that was when I properly became Naide. There were official forms as well; sometimes there wasn't even space for my full name!"

Before concentrating on long jumping, Gomes' name was more closely associated with the combined events. In addition to her IAAF World Indoor Championships Pentathlon gold medal in 2004, she also competed in the Heptathlon outdoors at the 2004 Olympic Games and 2005 IAAF World Championships.

However, just like the extended version of her name, her days as a heptathlete are now history.

"I don't think I will be able to do combined events again. In the last year or so I have had problems with my left leg, specifically my left knee. High jumping seemed to irritate it a lot. I have in fact been having some pain in the knee for several years, and hurdling sometimes causes problems as well."

"However, long jumping doesn't seem to cause the same problems so at the start of last year my coach and I decided to just concentrate on that event. It had become my best individual event as well although I still hold the Portuguese Indoor High Jump record."

Gomes also still holds a plethora of records in her native São Tomé e Principe, the tiny African country where she was born.

"My mother had some health problems and so she came to Lisbon when I was five. I then lived for a few years with my grandmother. However, my mother made an enormous effort to bring the whole family together again and I came to Portugal when I was 11 to join her."

"Unlike some immigrants who come to Portugal, like Francis Obikwelu who came from Nigeria, I didn't suffer too many problems with adapting to life here. My grandfather was also Portuguese and my family speaks Portuguese, it's my native language. As São Tomé is a former Portuguese colony so Portugal is in my blood."

"I was very lucky though with my life in São Tomé when I was young. My family wasn't wealthy but, looking back, we never lacked anything either. I had quite a good education there, in fact it was quite strict and so I learnt a lot, whether I wanted to or not. One of my big surprises when I came to Portugal was how badly behaved some of the other kids in my classes were. I used to think they would never have been able to do some of the things they did if they had been in São Tomé!"

"I think my life in São Tomé also helped give me a very good start in athletics. As a young girl I was always outdoors, running everywhere and climbing trees. I initially started doing athletics properly when I was 13 but quickly gave it up as I was getting back to the house late and it was interfering with my school work. To be honest, I couldn't see me having a future as a professional athlete but a year or so later a physical education teacher in the town of Fernão Ferro (on the opposite side of the Rio Tejo estuary to the Portuguese capital Lisbon), where we lived, told me that I had a lot of talent and encouraged me to return to training."

"By the age of 17, I was already among the best heptathletes and high jumpers in Portugal and made the decision to move to join Sporting Club de Lisbon. It was there that I met Abreu Matos, who has been my coach ever since. At that age I also started the process towards becoming a Portuguese citizen."

"I am happy to come from São Tomé e Principe and I represented the country at the Olympics in Sydney (in the 100m Hurdles after just missing out on the standard for the Heptathlon) but I thought to myself: 'I live here, I study here, I have been here all my adult life, I started athletics here and I am totally integrated into Portuguese society so why not become Portuguese.'"

She finally became eligible to compete for Portugal in 2001. Now all that remains for Gomes to supplant Mourinho as The Special One, at least to athletics fans' eyes, is to get Portugal's first World Championships gold medal in a decade as the Portuguese national anthem has not been played at the IAAF World Championships since Carla Sacramento won the 1997 women's 1500m title.

Published in IAAF Magazine Issue 1 - 2007