16-year-old boxer Gabriel Bona excelled in winning the gold medal at the Inter-American Jiu Jitsu Championship 2019. Not long ago Gabriel Bona had won the world championship in the youth tournament, along with many awards in Brazil and the International.
The remarkable thing is to have money to finance the competition, Gabriel Bona must sell cookies at Brazilian train stations until 9:30 every night. Reporter Lucrecia Franco wrote an article titled “16-year-old Jiu Jitsu champion selling biscuits to nurture sports dreams” in the CGTN America newspaper recounting the example of Gabriel’s attempt to overcome difficulties to succeed for Bona.
Specifically, Gabriel Bona was born into a not-so-well-off family in Rio de Janeiro, whose parents were both workers. From a young age, Bona was very active and liked martial arts so he studied traditional Brazilian martial art Jiu Jitsu. Because of her talent, Bona has shown her talent and won many awards in youth tournaments in Brazil.
However, because the martial art was not sponsored by the Brazilian government in competition and Bona’s family was too difficult to cover his long trips. Bona said: “I will not give up. I will do something instead of criticizing the crisis of the Brazilian economy or complaining about the athletes not receiving sponsorship. If I could just sit still and complain. Blame it, there’s absolutely no miracle. ”
Even with much success, Bona’s daily schedule remains unchanged, waking up at 6:30 am and going to the school of culture. After that, he will go home for lunch, go to the practice room to practice martial arts, and sell biscuits until 9:30 pm to go home to sleep.
A lot of Brazilians already know about Bona’s story, so support him by buying plastic wrap for cookies. A fan said: “Perhaps a lot of people think a world champion going to sell biscuits like that is humiliating, but I think he is respectable.”