Sports talents in judo and swimming

Abstract This paper purported to establish the existence of a system for the development of talented Brazilian athletes judo and swimmers, as well as to describe how coaches in both sports see this process occurring in practical terms. An exploratory and descriptive research was conducted by means of interviews with 18 high-performance coaches (11 swimming coaches and 7 judo coaches). The participating coaches answered to 10 semi-structured questions concerning the development of sports talents in Brazil. The polled results were analyzed through the “Discourse of the Collective Subject” (DCS) method. According to 77% of those coaches, there is no established national guidelines for the development of talents in either one of these sports categories, and 66% of the interviewed stated that the development of the athletes falls entirely to each sporting association they belong with. The opinions of the interviewed coaches indicate that the government offi ces in charge of sports administration produce no comprehensible national guidelines for judo and swimming in Brazil, which leaves to institutions such as Sports Clubs, Associations and Municipal Sports Authorities the full responsibility for the development of athletes in both categories.