Daunting journey for resilient 'Missing Kidney'

Brazil's Isaquias Queiroz celebrates winning the silver medal in Tuesday's 1,000m canoe single. [Photo/Agencies]

Isaquias Queiroz was badly scalded at age 3, was kidnapped two years later and at age 10 he lost a kidney after falling from a tree.

To say he's had a rough start in life is an understatement.

The 22-year-old became Brazil's first medalist in flatwater canoeing on Tuesday, winning a silver in the 1,000m singles. He's also competing in the 200m sprint and the 1,000m doubles.

"I was really satisfied to win this medal after all the obstacles I have faced," Queiroz said.

There is no visible trace of the hardship he endured while growing up. The scar from his kidney operation is hidden by his green uniform. Paddling on the lagoon in Rio, he is a confident young man with a gemstone gleaming in his left ear and tattoos covering his right shoulder.

But Queiroz entered his first Olympics with the weight of a nation on his broad shoulders. Brazil is counting on him to follow up on his three world titles with at least one Olympic gold medal.

His unlikely story began in Ubaitaba, a small town in Brazil's impoverished northeast, where Queiroz grew up with his mother and nine siblings, four of them adopted. His father died when he was 5.

The town's name stems from the indigenous word for "canoe", historically the main mode of transportation on the Rio de Contas. But Queiroz was more interested in soccer until he tried competitive canoeing when he was 11 as part of a government-funded social project, said Figueroa Conceicao, his childhood coach.

"From his first contact with the water, I realized he was good, that he had something special," Conceicao said.

He couldn't figure out why everyone called the boy "Sem Rim", which means "missing kidney" in Portuguese.

"So he showed me the scar and told me the story of when he went to see a snake which was up in a tree," Conceicao said. "There was a rock, and he fell on it and he had to go to the hospital. They took out his kidney."

It wasn't the only time the boy was in grave danger. As a toddler, he required emergency care after being scalded when a pot of hot water fell on him. When he was 5, he was kidnapped but returned to his mother unharmed.

Queiroz's career took off when he was still a teenager. By 2011, he was a junior world champion; two years later, he won the first of three world titles.

Coached by Spaniard Jesus Morlan, he's now competing on the Rodrigo de Freitas Lagoon before a roaring crowd, including his mother and several friends.

Queiroz resists talking about his background. In several interviews with Brazilian media before the Games, he insisted his childhood was a happy one.

"I have only one kidney, but I usually don't talk about it," he said on Tuesday. "I also suffered a burn when I was a kid on almost all of my right side."

However, he said he never let his difficulties get in the way of his Olympic dreams.

The hardship he has faced, Queiroz said, lies in the countless hours of grueling training it takes to become a top-level Olympic canoeist.

"I think the journey of an athlete comes with many difficulties," he said. "It's not smooth, not easy work. You have to kill yourself daily to get to the competition and win."