Isaquias Queiroz


Isaquias Queiroz dos Santos is a Brazilian sprint canoeist who has competed since 2005. He is the only Brazilian athlete to ever win three medals in a single edition of the Olympic Games.
He's been through adversity in his younger years. As a toddler he poured boiling water on himself and spent a month in hospital recovering, at the age of 5 he was kidnapped and offered up for adoption before being rescued by his mother, and 5 years later he fell out of a tree while trying to catch a snake and lost a kidney.

Career

Isaquias Queiroz is the first Brazilian sprint canoeist to win a medal at ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships. He won a bronze medal at the 2013 ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships at C–1 1000 m. Queiroz is two-time world champion at the ICF Canoe Sprint World Championships in Duisburg and Moscow at C–1 500 meters. He also is world champion at C–2 1000 meters in Milan along with Erlon Silva.

2016 Olympic Games

During the 2016 Summer Olympics, Queiroz managed to win three Olympic medals at a single Games: two silver and one bronze. In the C–1 1000 metres event he finished second, defeated only by Sebastian Brendel, who successfully defended his title. In the process, he became the first Brazilian sprint canoeist to win an Olympic medal. Two days later he took the bronze medal in the C–1 200 metres event, when Yuriy Cheban and Valentin Demyanenko were faster than him. Together with Erlon Silva they won the silver medal during the last day of canoe sprint competitions, in the C–2 1000 metres category. Queiroz was the first Brazilian athlete in history to win three medals at a single edition of the Olympic Games, and the first sprint canoe athlete from any nationality to do so in the history of the Olympics.