Renzo RUELE accepts head coach job in Brazil, looking toward Rio 2016 Games

The Italian coach will inherit a promising young team that has begun to contest for medals in 2014. Sara NIKITIN and Marcus DALMEIDA won recurve mixed team silver in Medellin; DALMEIDA is a favourite at Nanjing 2014 and is also in a strong position to qualify for this year’s Archery World Cup Final.

“It was a magical moment: winning with my teammate. To be in a final with Sara was great,” said DALMEIDA, after that second-stage second place. “We’re a great team and our trainers are fantastic.”

Brazil’s coaching and support crew grows stronger with the addition of RUELE. Archers shooting for the former Italian youth selection coach have won 15 world and 21 European titles, and broken 12 world records, since 1981.

Korean Coach LIM was installed to lead the Brazilian squad in 2010 before Richard PRIESTMAN, who had been working on Olympic Solidarity projects, took over in March this year. His tenure was short-lived, and now holds the head coaching job in Colombia.

RUELE started in Brazil on 2 June this year, with a contract that extends through the Rio 2016 Games.

The national archery federation in Brazil will hope RUELE brings stability through the rest of this Olympic cycle. He will be tasked with maximising the potential of elite talent nurtured by a development plan the Brazilian Olympic Committee and World Archery put in place in 2010.

Peter NIEWENHUIS – an expert in top performance programmes – supervises the Olympic Solidarity-supported initiative, which has been shown to other sports federations in Brazil as an example of how to successfully prepare athletes for a Games.

“We are making history for our country worldwide,” said Sara NIKITIN, explaining that all focus in Brazil is on getting a medal at Rio: “we are training just for this.”

Renzo RUELE, and the Brazilian team, has a clear goal to work towards over the next two years. Just how much more work is needed to reach that goal will become clear over the next two months, starting with the fourth and final 2014 Archery World Cup stage in Wroclaw.