Naide Gomes of Portugal (© Getty Images)
Portugal’s Enezenaide “Naide’ Gomes has at 24 years of age reached the top of world athletics. An amazing performance at the 10th IAAF World Indoor Championships in Budapest led her to first place on the medal podium with the year’s world best mark for the Pentathlon (4759pts), and new national records for that event (bettered by 164 points) and the High Jump (1.88m).
So in Budapest, Gomes became the first ever Portuguese athlete to become an international Combined Events champion, and only the country’s third ever World Indoor winner after João Campos (3000m, 1985 World Indoor Games), and Rui Silva (1500m, 2001).
Her “dream” took nine hours to complete, maintaining calm and concentration, throughout she did her best in all five events finishing with a total of 4759 points (8.48 Hurs; 1.88 HJ; 15.08 SP; 6.45 LJ; 2:21.69 800m).
“When leaving for Budapest I believed I could be indoor champion. I had worked hard for that”, Gomes confirmed.
In the Shot Put discipline “I started feeling that my dream could come true. The 60m hurdles went normal. In the High Jump, when passing at 1.85m, I thought the national record of 1.88m was possible to break. And I did it. But it was during the Long Jump that my heart felt the medal was close, as I only had to keep up the good work done so far.”
New nationality
Naide Gomes came to Portugal in 1990 at eleven years old. She was originally from Sao Tome and Principe, the small cluster of islands off the west coast of Africa which has a popluation of just 137,000, and gained it’s independence from Portugal in 1975.
In her homeland Gomes had never joined any club or had done any kind of sport. However, at school in Portugal she soon started to show her skills for sports beating even the boys. It was then that a teacher noticed her potential, namely in the High Jump and Hurdles, and advised her to join an athletics club.
So what had started “just for fun” became a serious matter.
At the 1998 African Championships in Dakar she competed in the High Jump and took 3rd place with 1.75m. She was also 2nd in the Heptathlon at the 2000 African Championships in Alger.
She also participated at the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games in the 100m Hurdles (14.43 sec; 8th in heat) representing Sao Tome and Principe.
At the beginning of her career she was briefly a member of a lot of clubs: Clamo in 1994, Ginásio do Sul in 1995, Belenenses in 1996, JOMA in 1997, and finally ‘Sporting’, which she represents today.
At the age of 17 she first decided she wished to obtain Portuguese nationality, and that was officially confirmed on 30 April 2001 when she was 21 years of age.
European Indoor success
In 2002, Naide growing success resulted in the silver medal in the European Indoor Championships in Vienna, Austria. Her performance of 4595 points behind Russia’s Yelena Prokhorova (4622) but noticeably ahead of the discipline’s new junior wonder Carolina Klüft, was Gomes’ first grand entrance into top flight athletic success.
Now in her second year of study to become a physiotherapist, Gomes confirmed that it isn’t “easy to do both study and sport. We have to give up a lot of things like family, boy-friend, friends and parties.” Even so, she has no regrets. “I made my choice and I don’t regret it.”
For fun, she enjoys: “cinema, reading, dancing and going out with friends”.
The Athens Olympic Games are her next goal. “Firstly I have to get the qualification. Nevertheless, all I can promise is to do my best and try hard to win.”
Her personal best and national record for the Heptathlon is 6160 points which she set when finishing third in Ratingen in 2002 - 13.79/0.7; 1.86;13.36; 25.36/1.6; 6.56/0.5; 39.37; 2:20.92.
Name: Naide Gomes
Date of Birth: 10.11.79
Club: Sporting
Coach: Abreu Matos
Best results
1st World Indoor Championships Budapest 2004 (4759 points)
2nd European Indoor Championships Vienna 2002 (Pentathlon, 4595 points)
5th World Indoor Championhips Birmingham 2003 (Pentathlon, 4476 points)
High Jump (1.84m) and Long Jump (6.57) National champion (2002)
High Jump (1.82m) and Long Jump (6.44) Indoor National champion 2002
Long Jump Indoor National champion 2003 (6.29) and 2004 (6.41)
