Silvia Poll - A Woman In Sports in A DNA

From Ricardo Prado (Brazil) and Ana Maria Schutlz (Argentina) to Eugenio Alberto Mestre (Venezuela) and Ana Lallande (Puerto Rico), Latin America has had a significant swimmers, but none to compare with the Silvia Poll Ahrens, a famous athlete from Costa Rica between 1986 and 1992. Born in Managua, Nicaragua, Miss Poll, whose parents from Nordrein, moved Westfalia (Germany), with Costa Rica in the late 70s (during the war in Nicaragua). With the support of her family as some Latin American athletes-she won a silver medal in the Summer Olympics in Seoul, South Korea.

Like Luis Mireya Hernandez (volleyball), Nadia Comaneci (gymnastics), and Sonja Henie (skating), it was recognized early on as a prodigy. She started training with Francisco Rivas was in the early 80s, together with other swimmers like Marcela Cuesta, Montserrat Hidalgo, and Sigrid Niehaus. Began rigorous training outcome results in the mid 1980s. At the 1986 Central American & Caribbean Games in the Dominican Republic, Hole, when she was only 15 years old, released a total of ten medals; is one of the best performances by women in sport history. But not all were.

Silvia Poll & Óscar Arias Sánchez

By August 1987, she took up a total of eight Pan American medals (3 gold, 3 silver, 2 bronze) in Indianapolis, Indiana (USA), for sparking celebrations in the Republic of Central America. Certainly, the results were good for the size of the country, are more than twice the size of Massachusetts. Costa Rica was not Curious Pan American medal from 1951, when the football team of the country's runners-up at the First Pan American Games in Buenos Aires, Argentina. In Indiana, was elected Miss Hole "Queen of international games." After that event, she captured six gold medals in Cincinnati, USA.

Nicaraguan-born Costa Rican swimmer Silvia Poll twice named Best Athlete of Latin America (1987 & 1988), Diego Armando Maradona front and Ayrton Senna. Despite these achievements, she suffered a serious setback when she was backed by the nation then President Óscar Arias Sánchez (and 1986 Nobel Peace Prize winner). As a result, she was not competing in a pre-Olympic competitions many in Australia, Europe, USSR, and the U.S.. Undoubtedly, she lost the opportunity to become Olympic champ.

Today she is as famous as a football star in Central America, is remembered not only for their achievements, but for a specific discipline. ever After her retirement from national team, Latin America's swimmers were again successful at the Summer Olympics until 1996 when it won Claudia, Silvia's sister, the gold medal in the Olympiad in America.

Alejandro Guevara Onofre: Freelance writer. Alejandro is author of many articles / essays of more than 220 countries and dependencies (and the U.S. states as well), from ecology, history, tourism and Olympic sports national heroes, external relations, and wildlife. In addition, he has published several books on women's rights, including "History of Women in America" and "Famous Americans".