MikeLigalig.com

By Bruna Gama

Brazil's Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo said on Monday that the country needs 'much improvement' for the 2016 Olympic Games.

The Minister expected Brazilian athletes to win 20 medals in the London Games, which ended last Sunday.

Brazilians had their best Olympic performance ever in London, winning 17 medals, three of them golds, but did not manage to satisfy Rebelo.

"We thought our performance in London would be affected by the resources we applied from Beijing to London," he said.

According to the Minister, Rio's Games in 2106 are "a challenge to be embraced".

Though Brazilian athletes' performance fell short of the Minister's estimates, some important medals were achieved in London. For the first time, Brazil had a medalist in gymnastics (Arthur Zanneti won the gold in men's rings) and modern pentathlon (Yane Marques won the bronze in the women's competition).

Brazilian boxers got three medals (one silver, two bronzes), after 44 years without any podiums in Olympic games.

Sarah Menezes won the first gold in women's judo, and the women's volleyball team won the gold for the second consecutive time.

Other sports did not correspond to expectations. The men's football team, who won FIFA's World Cup five times, lost the Olympic final to Mexico, and for the first time since the 1992 Games, in Barcelona, Brazil's athletics team did not get a single medal, and athletes got to six finals, down from 11 in Beijing.

Minister Rebelo stressed that in the latest two games, the host countries -China and United Kingdom- worked hard to have a performance 'compatible to their efforts as hosts' and said Brazil must do the same thing.

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