Paulo goes to Paris and hopes to officiate the gold medal game. He is a rugby referee, but a tackle almost robbed him of his trip to Tokyo

A “subchondral bone contusion”, in its scientific and unembellished description, suggests a serious injury, given the name, a blow would have been something which for the referee is suggestive of a generous pinch of bad luck, of being in the wrong place at an inconvenient time. In rugby where the clash of bodies is natural and necessary, Paulo Duarte exists to whistle, an observer with the power to monitor the rules of the game who, three years ago today, was “in the right position to watch a rehearsal” at Técnico- Belenenses when, to avoid tragedy against his team, a player “lunged” and hit him in the leg.

Instantly, Paulo Duarte’s head filled with fear. The Olympic Games worried him, he immediately feared that his body, the only one supposedly not intended for use on a rugby field, would prevent him from appearing as one of the referees selected for the debut of the sevens in the five rings event. “Everyone who noticed the thing looked at me with a look… ‘you’re gone’”, he says, remembering the brutal teasing at the time. There were around three months to go, time was pressing and the orthopedists appealed for caution, for the referee to take it easy and move little, “no adventures”. The dream throbbing due to a desperate tackle.

Paulo was encouraged in times of real aversion to contact a little everywhere, we were experiencing the pandemic and its confinement and its masks and at the cost of his effort and the emptying of his wallet, the referee dedicated himself, without ceremony , to treatments and physiotherapy and psychology, because there is no body that can do it if the head cannot do it first. In good time, in the summer he was in Japan, being the main referee in a trio of games in the men’s rugby tournament with seven players and in three other women’s tournaments, with one highlight: he was responsible for the whistle in the Fiji-Great Islands. Brittany that awarded the bronze medal to the women of the South Pacific. There was no mask to cover eyes that were once bathed in tears, then torn with joy.