In 2001 a young Brazilian boy named Reinaldo Colucci was spotted by a successful sports coach in his home town Sao Carlos in Brazil. This coach trained a triathlon squad which included some top triathletes. The young boy was invited to come and train with the coach’ squad and he had little idea who he was actually training with but he did realize they swam, biked and run very fast! After 4 weeks he started to manage to stay close to them and achieved an amazing progress in his athletic and psychological abilities. It was by that time young Reinaldo realized he was actually training with a world champion named Craig Walton. Reinaldo’s young mind was formed for the rest of his life because he trained and learned from some of the world’s best. He experienced on a daily basis what training and race strategies these athletes apply to stay on top of their game and keep the competition behind them so he was able to look into “their kitchen of success’. Top personal coaches in the world will tell you that “if you want to become the best, your have to spend time with the very best”.
Six years after this mentorship, it must have been an amazing feeling for both Reinaldo and Craig to then face each other in this year’s World Cup race in Ishigaki (Japan) on the 1st of April 2007. Reinaldo, now 21 years, managed to over take his formal mentor and role model to finish ahead of him in 5th place in his first ever World Cup race. While every athlete hates to loose, you can only imagine the pride and gratitude that Craig must have felt when he got beaten by ‘his young athlete protégé”. This is where a world class athlete, who has won pretty much everything there is to be won in his sport, is partly responsible for the creation of future athletes in the sport. Not just a wonderful story but also some amazing insights in the world of top sports!
Its teamTBB’s desire to establish more stories like these, to create some Asian ‘Reinaldo’s and that is what attracts world class athletes with a big heart to this team and not the money!
