Hipolito feels at home in new training set-up

“I started seeing that I could get better, that I still have room to improve, and that I have the ability to break world records.”

Brazilian sprinter Veronica Hipolito is leaving no stone unturned in her quest to top the podium at this year’s Paralympic Games – and that means surrounding herself with some of the best Brazilians in the business.

In February the 19-year-old switched her coaching set-up so she could train alongside her Brazilian teammates and regain some much-needed confidence.

Hipolito now trains under the guidance of Brazilian head coach Amaury Verissimo – her training partners include Paralympic and world champion Yohansson Nascimento, former multiple world champion Lucas Prado and Paralympic champion Terezhina Guilhermina – and their enthusiasm and determination is rubbing off.

“If you turn to your left you will see a gold medallist, if you turn to your right you will see world champions,” said Hipolito, who this week will take over the Paralympics Instagram account.

“When you are around them more than you are around your own family, you have the sense of how close they are.

“We joke that it is a family and Amaury is our Dad here. It’s also about pushing each other and finding ways to motivate each other - that is what makes this group so special.”

Last year Hipolito missed the World Championships as she took time out to recover from surgery. Her biggest rivals – Great Britain’s Sophie Hahn, Russia’s Margarita Goncharova, and China’s Junfei Chen meanwhile broke record after record in Doha, Qatar.

The Brazilian tried to look upon her enforced break as a chance to find out what her rivals were up to - and how hard she needed to work. But she soon began to question her own abilities. Fortunately for Hipolito, she found the support she needed amongst her fellow Para athletes.

“I was talking to Yohansson and Mateus Evangelista and I was telling them what I was afraid of,” she explained.

“I wasn’t sure if I could be in the (Brazilian Paralympic) team. And Mateus looked at me and said ‘That’s not you, that’s not the Veronica I know.’

“And that was when it clicked. I thought ‘Okay that’s where I want to train, that’s the facility I want to be in. That’s when I decided to come here.”

Now, with the IPC Athletics Grand Prix in Rio de Janeiro this week (18-21 May), and a home Games in less than four months’ time, she believes she has what it takes to win – thanks to the support of her teammates.

“When I got here my self-esteem was very low, I couldn’t believe in myself at the time,” she said.

“I was also affected because of the records that were broken in Doha. I was getting injured instead of practising.

“I feel like I’m much better now than I was, mainly because of my partners here in practice. When I talk to them about the situation with my rivals they calm me down really easily.

“I started seeing that I could get better, that I still have room to improve, and that I have the ability to break world records.”

There’s no denying that the women’s T38 sprints and long jump are highly competitive. With the world record broken in all four events last year – Goncharova leapt 5.22m in Berlin, Germany, last June, to add to the 100m, 200m and 400m records that fell at Doha 2015 – Hipolito knows she needs to be at her very best.

“You always have someone wanting to beat you; there is no margin for error,” she added.

“That’s what makes my class so exciting right now – we need to beat world records in order to get medals.

“I will feel better when I am the best of them all. I know that I have a main rival in each of the races - and I want to be the best in each race.”

This week’s Grand Prix – the seventh in the IPC Athletics series, which doubles as the Rio test event, will be Hipolito’s first track meeting of the season.

“If the results come in the Grand Prix and in the Brazilian circuit, I know that [my teammates] have been a part of it, because they helped me to recover my self-esteem.

“When an athlete is confident in himself, he can do things that nobody thought was possible.”