Cortes – Patrícia

Patrícia Mamona is a Portuguese triple jumper. In October 2018, two years away from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (which were then postponed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic), I started visiting Patrícia’s training sessions at Centro de Alto Rendimento do Jamor in Lisbon. We had a simple arrangement: I could film or photograph without restrictions as long as she didn’t have to interrupt any of the exercises. Her discretion and focus made me feel almost invisible, as I either anticipated some of her exercises or was overtaken by others.

Her lonely and repetitive training routine involves a careful balancing act of the body and mind, juggling determination and ambition with exhaustion and anxiety, often being months away from any competition.

It was a long and complicit process that lasted until September 2021, a month after she won the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics, setting a new personal and national record of 15.01 meters.

José Pedro Cortes

Patrícia is the portrait of a solitary performer, of the body and mind at work. Throughout the book we feel the experience of the training routine of an Olympic athlete, as we watch, in a parallel montage, a sequence of images of her winning jump at the Tokyo Olympics.