Through skating, the Mozambican Donaldo Salvador, who crossed the country from the Rovuma to the Maputo on a route of more than 3,000 km, aims to strengthen national unity and raise the sport to the highest level.
He is passionate about sport and has found true love in it. We are talking about Donaldo Salvador, aged 33, a native of the city of Quelimane, in Zambezia province, in central Mozambique. He is one of the 300 best skaters on the planet – a ranking obtained in 2021 at the 47th BMW Berlin Marathon of inline skating. His love of skates seems immeasurable, and he wants to spread that affection across the country, as a way of publicising this special sport and making inline skating mainstream.
Donaldo Salvador is one of the 300 best skaters on the planet – a ranking obtained in 2021 at the 47th BMW Berlin Marathon of inline skating
A graduate in Sports Science from the Faculty of Physical Education and Sport of the Pedagogical University of Maputo, Donaldo fell in love with skating at around 18, but from an early age he considered himself a true sports fanatic. He has training in different sports, such as, for example, refereeing in roller hockey and in beach and indoor volleyball. He also has scientific knowledge of swimming, volleyball, handball, cycling and athletics. “I started practising the sport at around 18, in the city of Quelimane. I developed the taste on my own, with a pair of skates I bought from a neighbour. Over time, I grew to enjoy it, thanks to the influence of some friends in our free moments after school. Later, when Mozambique won the Group B world championship, I began to dream of being a national champion like them,” he said. Thanks to his aptitude and flexibility in learning, Donaldo Salvador practises a bit of every sport, with great enthusiasm. He does inline skating, figure skating, roller hockey, inline high jump, inline long jump, cycling, athletics, swimming, basketball, handball, motorcycling, drifting and horse riding. Visibly moved and full of pride, Donaldo Salvador said that he was the first president of the Quelimane City Skating Association, and the first international in the field of inline skating in Mozambique. “I have a skating school that operates at Eduardo Mondlane University and I am a skating teacher.”
Salvador promoted the first inline skating marathon in the city of Quelimane. It covered around 30 km, in 2020. He drove the first skating marathon in Nampula, on Mozambique Island, in Gaza province, from Vilankulo to Phambara, and held the first speed race in the city of Beira. In every race there were more than 40 young participants, including the judges and technical team. “I have always thought about doing something different in the world of inline skating,” confided the skater, and went on to say that, as a way of paying tribute to his godmother Maria Tomásia Maciel, who did and contributed so much to the growth of this sport in Mozambique, he conceived an unprecedented and gigantic marathon. “I skated from the Quelimane Municipal Council to the Maputo Municipal Council, a route of around 1,640 km,” he said proudly, adding that this feat took place over 22 days, including five rest days. This was the first national and African record.
From May to June this year, Donaldo Salvador completed another inline skating marathon, with the aim of creating cohesion among the Mozambican people. The skating run began at the National Unity bridge, in Cabo Delgado, in the far north of the country, on 1 May, and ended on 24 June at Ponta do Ouro, in Maputo province. The very next day, 25 June, National Independence Day, the skater and his team were received by the Mozambican Head of State, Filipe Nyusi, in recognition of the young man’s efforts on behalf of national unity.
For his part, Ricco Maciel Alibai, director of the Marathon project, said: “Few believed in us; they thought that crossing the country from the Rovuma to the Maputo on skates was impossible. Many only showed their faces now at the end, and that saddens us a great deal,” confided the sports official. Along the same lines, he assured us that “the terrain, the food, the habits and customs, the condition of the public roads, among other factors, were an immense challenge. Despite these adversities, the message of national unity was delivered at every stage of the process, from the presentation of the plan to the end of the route,” he said. “The message got through and we felt the effects of national unity; we saw a single, indivisible country. People talked to us in the most varied languages, and we answered in those we know. There was always total support and a desire that it would reach Maputo and that we would report on everything that happened along the way. In short, it was a very beautiful event,” argued Ricco Alibai.
The Marathon project director also affirmed that “we are a very young nation in which each leader learns from the other as an individual, and obviously feels fulfilled in believing that the Mozambican Skating Federation also carries the same feeling. So do the Secretariat of State for Sport and the Presidency of the Republic, at its highest level, in awarding Donaldo Salvador the sports merit medal. This is a cross-cutting and vertical project in terms of satisfaction; what also pleases us is that there is a certain consensus that Donaldo deserves this recognition. This is the longest project that has ever taken place in Mozambique on a continuous basis, and several lessons were learnt,” concluded the sports official.
