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The Building:Carlos Lopes Pavilion (
visit link) is located in the Parque Eduardo VII parish of São Sebastião da Pedreira, in Lisbon.
The building, designed by architects William and Carlos Rebello de Andrade Santos and Alfredo Asuncion, was first built in Brazil for the Great International Exhibition in Rio de Janeiro, opening May 21, 1923.
It would later be rebuilt in Lisbon, and called the Palace of Exhibitions. The opening took place on 3 October 1932 with the Great Industrial Exhibition Portuguese.
It was adapted to receive sports events in 1946 and played there is the World Championship of Hockey in 1947.
In 1984, changes its name in honor of the Portuguese athlete Carlos Lopes.
The building will be transformed into the National Sports Museum.
The future museum will auditoriums, cafeteria, restaurant, shop, desportódromo, exhibitions and five themes: the body, physical activity, sport, heritage and change.
(From Wikipedia)
The Person:Carlos Alberto de Sousa Lopes, (
visit link) (born February 18, 1947) is a former Portuguese long-distance athlete, winner of the marathon race at the 1984 Summer Olympics, in Los Angeles. He brought home Portugal's first ever Olympic gold medal along with a new Olympic record - 2:09.21.
Born in Vildemoinhos, near Viseu, Portugal, Carlos Lopes worked as a stonecutter's helper. He wanted to play football at the local club, but his father opposed this, so he turned to other forms of athletics. In 1967 he was personally invited to join the athletics team of Sporting Clube de Portugal, and remained there until the end of his career in 1985. He was an average quality long distance runner, until he made an astonishing breakthrough in 1976, aged 29.
After the superb 1976 season, Lopes slipped back into the same relative obscurity in which he had been before 1976, failing to qualify for the Moscow Olympics due to several injuries.
In 1982, he returned to top form, and in Oslo, he broke the 10,000 m European record—27:24.39—which belonged to his teammate Fernando Mamede. After setting the pace from 6,000 metres at the 1982 European Athletics Championships 10,000-metre race, he finished fourth in 27:47.95.
Lopes attempted his first marathon at the end of 1982 (New York), but he did not finish due to an accident in which he crashed into a spectator. The following year, he made his second attempt at the marathon, this time at (Rotterdam). He finished a close second in a European record time of 2:08:39.
1984 was Lopes' greatest year. In New Jersey, he regained his cross-country world title in front of thousands of ecstatic Portuguese emigrants. In Stockholm, he helped teammate Fernando Mamede to break Henry Rono's 10,000 m world record of 27:22, with Mamede winning in 27 min 13.81 s and Lopes finishing second in 27:17.48.
An accident almost prevented Lopes from participating in the 1984 Olympics when, a week before the Games, he was run over by a car in Lisbon. Amazingly, he was not hurt. The Olympic marathon at Los Angeles was run in very hot and humid conditions, and as the favorites gradually fell away, it was the 37-year-old Lopes who led the field into the stadium and won the gold medal with a 200m advantage and in an Olympic record 2:09:21. With this victory, he improved his reputation as a runner, because he could run the last 7.2 kilometres at an average speed of 2 minutes 55 seconds per kilometre, a remarkably quick pace at the end of a fast marathon (see, for example, "The Big Olympic Book" / Suuri Olympiakirja, Helsinki: "Runner" / Juoksija magazine, 1984). Portugal erupted in celebration of its first ever Olympic gold. Lopes' Olympic record stood until the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, when the young Kenyan sensation Sammy Wanjiru broke it in dominating fashion with a time of 2:06:32, bringing home to Kenya its long-overdue first gold medal in the Olympic marathon.
(From Wikipedia)