Rui Bragança

About me

Rui Pedro Rebelo Bragança

My name is Rui Bragança and I was the first portuguese athlete to win a fight at the Olympic Games. I was born in Guimarães on the 26th of December 1991 and I graduated in Medicine at the University of Minho. I represent Sport Lisboa e Benfica and I chose not to practice medicine whilst I dedicated myself 100% to taekwondo.

I was 13 when I randomly started my taekwondo journey, and 2 years later I entered my first junior national championship. I was national champion for the first time and I was called to represent Portugal at the Junior European Championship. It was a great competition and I was able to bring home a bronze medal.

2009

2011

2013

2014

2015

2016

2009

In 2009, representing Minho University I got the 2nd place at the University European Championships and on the same year I started the European circuit, slowly rising on the world ranking.

2011

2011, another premiere and another great result. First time fighting at a World Championship and first ever world silver medal for Portugal! And also the first wonderings about being able to fight at the 2012 Olympic Games. The World Championship was so good that all the statistics pointed me as the -58kg Silver medalist.

But…. On the last seconds of the European Qualification, the Swedish took the fight and postponed my dream to 2016.

2013

2013 was maybe the most complicated year of my career. A knee injury, not a lot of results and the idea of going for the -68kg started to become real. The decision was left for December, the Paris Open and a gold medal made me stay on the -58.

2014

After that, 2014 was the comeback year. The results came back but 2 weeks before the European Championship I was on crutches because of an injury. And once again, the premiere was a lucky charm – European Championship and great competition where the pain was the last thing on my mind. First European title for me and for Portugal, just simply an amazing day.

This journey made me rise again on the Olympic ranking and I was even number 1 on the world ranking.

2015

I won the European games in 2015 and the Turkish Grand Prix and with all of this I was able to seal my passport for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games as the number 3 of the Olympic Ranking .

2016

I was able to repeat the gold at 2016 Europeans and in Rio I won the first fight but got eliminated on the 2nd by Luisito Pie who then won the bronze medal.

After the games I tried to fight in -68 but that proved not to be my category and I came back to -58kgs. The readaptation wasn’t easy and 2017 wasn’t a good year.

2018 the results started to come back and the improvements continue, making the expectations for Tokyo 2020 really high.

Road to

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Training hours

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