Thiago Braz: Rivalry, Injury & Net Worth
Brazilian athlete Thiago Braz is a household name who is interested in the pole vault. He ranks seventh at the Men’s Pole Vault rankings and 103rd in the overall Men’s rankings.
Braz blew the world when he vaulted 6.03 meters during the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics. Moreover, he earned a gold medal and set a new Olympics record.
In addition, he was amongst the only nine pole vaulters who had jumped above 6 meters.
Braz reached the finals of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and took home the bronze medal.
Similarly, he was the first Brazilian to compete in the Olympics consecutively two times in a row.
Braz was honored and received the Athlete of the year title. The Brazilian Olympics Committee presented him with this honor.
The following year, the Brazilian Ministry of Defence rewarded him with the Military Sports Merit Medal.
If you desire to know more about the highly skilled athlete Thiago Braz, keep scrolling down.
Quick Facts
Here are some quick facts about Brazilian athlete Thiago Braz:
Full Name | Thiago Braz da Silva |
Birth Date | 16th December 1993 |
Birth Place | Maília, Sāo Paulo, Brazil |
Residence | Italy |
Religion | Catholic |
Nationality | Brazilian |
Ethnicity | Italian Brazilians |
Hobbies | Not Available |
Food Habit | Not Available |
Education | Not Available |
Zodiac Sign | Sagittarius |
Birth Stone | Turquoise, Zircon and Tanzanite |
Father’s Name | Not Available |
Mother’s Name | Not Available |
Siblings | Not Available |
Age | [calculate_years datestring=”12/16/1993″] Years Old |
Height | 6 feet |
Reach | Not Available |
Weight | 75 kg |
Eye Color | Light Brown |
Hair Color | Black |
Body Type | Athletic |
Profession | Pole Vaulter |
Associated Teams | Brazilian Track and Field team |
Marital Status | Married |
Spouse | Ana Paula Oliveira |
Children | None |
Debuted | 2009 |
Net Worth | $1 million – $5 million |
Personal Best | 6.03 meters (2016) |
Olympics Final | 2016 Rio de Janeiro, 2020 Tokyo Olympics |
Outdoor Record | 5.94 meters |
Indoor Record | 5.93 meters |
Coached by | Vitaly Petrov |
Social Media | Instagram, Twitter, Facebook |
Merch | Pole Vaulting T-Shirt |
Last Update | [current-month], [current-year] |
Thiago Braz: Body Measurement
Thiago Braz stands 6 feet tall. He weighs around 75 kg and has an athletic body type.
As a professional athlete, he exercises often and maintains a balanced diet.
The pole vaulter has short black hair and is clean-shaven. However, he sometimes keeps a beard and a mustache.
Further, he has beautiful light brown eyes. Braz has a fair appearance and an attractive smile.
Moreover, his exact body measurements are not available.
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Thiago Braz: Early Life and Education
Thiago Braz was born Thiago Braz da Silva on December 16, 1993. His parents gave birth to him in Maília, Sāo Paulo, Brazil.
However, the information about his parents and other family members is not available.
Braz wasn’t born in a luxurious environment and had to struggle to flourish as an athlete. He didn’t live with his parents but instead stayed with his grandparents.
From his childhood, he used to play a lot of sports and was very athletic.
His uncle Fabiano was an excellent motivation for him as he pushed Braz to do sports.
Braz’s uncle was a decathlon athlete. Meanwhile, both uncle and nephew did sports together.
Sports shaped up his character from earlier on, and he learned a great deal about discipline from it.
Braz believes that sports are a great medium to build oneself, as it teaches people many values life lessons.
So, initially, he started pole vaulting at the age of 14.
Thiago Braz: Career
Brazilian athlete Braz is professionally a pole vaulter who has been competing in the championships since 2009.
He has competed in the game events like Cartagena de Indias, Ergo Arena, Estadio Olímpico, Sao Bernardo do Campo and so on.
He started by participating in the South American Junior Championships, where he ranked third. Braz vaulted at 4.40 meters.
Ukrainian native Vitaly Petrov coaches pole vaulter Braz. In 2010, he competed in the Youth Olympics held in Singapore. Eventually, he managed to win a silver medal.
In the 2012 World Junior Championships held in Barcelona, he won a gold medal. The following year he gained the title of the South American champion.
In addition, the pole vaulter had set an outdoor record by vaulting 5.83 meters.
Moreover, in 2015 in Baku, Azerbaijan, he created a new outdoor vault record of 5.94 meters.
Braz continued setting records in the indoor area record as well. In 2016, he recorded an indoor record of 5.93 meters at the ISTAF indoor.
However, during the South American Championships in 2019, he ranked second with points of 5.41 meters.
He participated in the Pan American Games in Lima, Peru, and finished at 4th position.
Also, the Brazilian athlete competed at the World Championships, where he finished 5th and vaulted 5.70 meters.
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Olympics
After competing in World Championships and Youth Olympics, Thiago Braz finally made his way into the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.
Meanwhile, in his first debut, he managed to bring home the gold medal.
Moreover, Braz defeated French pole vaulter Renaud Lavillenie, the predecessor of the Olympics gold medal.
The Brazilian athlete won the gold medal and set a new Olympics pole vaulting record of 6.03 meters.
After his win, he became the first male Brazilian athlete to receive a gold medal after Joaquim Cruz in 1984.
Brazilian athlete Braz competed during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. However, he couldn’t beat Armand Duplantis and Chris Nilsen, who took home the gold & silver medals, respectively.
Braz won the bronze medal by vaulting 5.87 meters. Whereas Duplantis vaulted 6.02 meters and Nilsen vaulted at 5.97 meters.
His back-to-back two medals win in the Olympics is marked in the history of pole vaulting.
Braz is the ninth athlete ever in pole vaulting who won two Olympics medals consecutively.
Meanwhile, some of the other nine athletes include Maksim Tarasov, Shuhei Nishida, Renaud Lavillenie, Igor Trandenkov, etc.
After he won a medal in the 2020 Olympics, he visited the Instituto Projecto Neymar Jr.
It is a Brazilian institute designed by footballer Neymar Jr to support children to conquer their dreams.
The institute provides lots of opportunities like teaching them literature, robotics, and even English.
He couldn’t meet the children due to covid 19 rules but felt good visiting the institute, making children’s lives better.
Braz is still driven and is looking forward to competing in the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics.
He wants to be limitless in the his future games and give his best performance in the world championship.
Thiago Braz: Career Downfall
Brazilian athlete Thiago Braz didn’t have any vast achievements after the 2016 Rio Olympics season.
In addition, he struggled to keep up to the expectations and performed relatively average in the championships.
After the 2016 games, Braz had planned to break the pole vaulting world record with his coach Vitaly Petrov.
Instead, Ukrainian pole vaulter Sergey Bubka set the new record, and it was a vault of 6.14 meters.
Both Braz and coach Petrov had talked about their plans in a press conference. However, their plans didn’t work, and Braz didn’t perform well in the upcoming games.
In 2017, the pole vaulter only vaulted 5.60 meters in outdoor games and 5.86 meters indoors.
During his low pole vaulting period, Swedish vaulter Armand Duplantis started dominating.
Also, many events were surrounding him, like changing his coach and losing his club.
In October 2018, Braz announced that he would start training with his former coach Elson Miranda who coached him during his early career.
Also, he left his club, The Italian city of Formia, and returned to Sāo Paulo.
However, only some months later, he joined hands with Vitaly Petrov and returned to his base, Formia.
Then to everyone’s disappointment, the coronavirus pandemic started appearing.
Moreover, the Esporte Clube Pinheiros club fired Thiago Braz because of his low performance and low visibility in pole vaulting.
Since he was the highest-paid athlete of their club, they had to let him go since he wasn’t performing well.
However, Braz defended himself over this issue as there were still eight months before the contract ended.
Moreover, in 2019, Braz was in good shape and competed at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
Thiago Braz: Injuries
Brazilian athlete Braz got injured during the IAAF 2017 World Championships and wasn’t able to compete.
He suffered back pain from his injured ribs. Also, he had an injury on one of his calf muscles, due to which he had to withdraw from the competition.
In addition, in 2019, despite having muscle pain in his calf, he competed in the World Championships held in Doha, Qatar.
Moreover, back in 2014, during the Lausanne Diamond League, Braz missed the mat while landing.
It was his second attempt at vaulting 5.87 meters. Fortunately, nothing serious happened, and he was fine.
Thiago Braz: Rivalry
Thiago Braz went head to head with German pole vaulter Raphael Holzdeppe at the 2015 Baku Street Athletics.
During the games, both swiftly cleared the 5.87 meters & 5.92 meters vault.
But, they both couldn’t make it through the 6.02 meters and failed all three attempts.
However, Braz lost to Holzdeppe on countback as the German vaulter’s previous vault points outshined Braz’s.
During the 2016 Rio Olympics finals, French Renaud Lavilleni and Thiago Braz competed for the gold medal. However, it was Braz who took home the gold medal.
In his second attempt for the 6.03 meters, he succeeded and made a new Olympics record.
There was a friendly rivalry between Braz and Filipino athlete Ej Obiena during the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
They have been close buddies and training partners since they trained under the same coach Vitaly Petrov.
However, as the competition started building up, they were seen as competitors.
Even Obiena’s father commented that his son and Braz have begun to see each other as competitors.
Also, they were no longer friendly like before. Moreover, Braz had to defend his gold medal as he was the reigning champion. So, the competition created a rivalry.
Thiago Braz: Personal Life
Brazilian pole vaulter Thiago Braz is happily married to Ana Paula de Oliveira.
They have known each other since 2016. She is an athlete as well who specializes in the high jump.
Oliveira has won gold for her country Brazil during the 2015 South American Championships.
Braz and Oliveira share a very romantic relationship and support her husband Braz all the way.
Oliveria is active on Instagram under the name Ana Braz.
Both Braz and his wife Oliveira share pictures of them spending time together on various social media.
In addition, Braz always compliments his wife, saying she is the source of his motivation.
The pole vaulter feels she is his backbone, who constantly pushes him to be his best self.
Moreover, Braz has been motivated by many athletes in his journey. For example, Brazilian pole vaulter Fabiana Murer highly influences him.
Thiago Braz: Net Worth
Brazilian athlete Braz is estimated to have a net worth of $1 million – $5 million. He earned this massive net worth from his pole vaulting career.
Braz was the highest-paid athlete under the Latin American club. However, the information of his exact salary is not available.
However, according to the stat, the average salary of a pole vaulter is $52,579 yearly.
He promotes many clothing merchandises like NR Sports, Fine Hygenic Holding, and Nike.
Also, Braz is a client of N&N Consultoria, which other athletes like Neymar Jr, Pedro Scooby, Lucas Lima, etc., also use.
Thiago Braz: Social Media
Brazilian pole vaulter Thiago Braz is active on Instagram with a whopping 455k followers. On the site, he shares pictures related to his career and his personal life.
Besides, he is on Twitter as well, where he has over 42.3k followers. He joined the social networking site in January 2015.
Moreover, Thiago has a Facebook page with a massive 88k followers. Braz seems to be pretty active in his social handles and loves to connect with his fans.
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FAQS
Can Thiago Braz win a gold medal in the 2024 Paris Olympics?
There is a chance that Thiago Braz can bring home the gold medal in the upcoming 2024 Paris Olympics.
Braz won the bronze medal in the 2020 Olympics and gold in the 2016 Rio Olympics.
Who is the wealthiest Brazilian athlete of all time?
Brazilian footballer Pele is the wealthiest athlete with a $100 million estimated net worth.
Also, he is professionally an actor and Film Producer as well. In this era, athletes earn a considerable income.