| Personal information | |
|---|---|
| Nationality | French, Cape Verdean |
| Born | 25 August 1996 [1] [2] |
| Fencing career | |
| Sport | Fencing |
| Country |  Cape Verde |
| Weapon | Foil |
| Hand | Right-handed [3] |
Victor Alvares de Oliveira [4] (born 25 August 1996) is a foil fencer. Born in France, he qualified to represent Cape Verde at the 2024 Summer Olympics.
Alvares de Oliveira was born to a Cape Verdean father and a Spanish-Portuguese mother; he grew up in Reims, France, and has dual Cape Verdean-French citizenship. [5] [6] According to Olympics.com, he grew up with severe asthma and thus spent "large portions of his formative years in the confines of paediatric wards." [5] He liked the sport of fencing growing up, but doctors give him little chance of ever being successful in the sport due to his condition. [5] However, he began competing in foil events nonetheless and still managed to perform well; he said that "I still had to do twice the effort of other athletes when we were doing exercises. But my asthma was getting better." [5]
Alvares de Oliveira, a member of the club Courbevoie Escrime, [7] rose through the fencing ranks and made the French national team. [5] He also ranked at one time in the top 20 globally for junior foil fencers. [8] He moved to Paris to train further in fencing, with the goal of ultimately reaching the Olympics. [5] In 2018, he contacted the Cape Verdean sports authorities with the intention of honoring his father's heritage by competing internationally for them. [5] He competed for them at the Fencing World Cup in 2019, and became the first-ever professional fencer for Cape Verde; he had the second-best placement among African foil fencers at the tournament. [5] [7] [9] He competed for Cape Verde at the Fencing Grand Prix in 2021, with hopes of qualifying for the postponed 2020 Summer Olympics, although he did not qualify, with a loss to Salim Heroui in the final. [5] [8] [10] Although unable to qualify for the Olympics that year, he participated at the African championships and won the silver medal. [11]
Alvares de Oliveira competed for Cape Verde at the 2022 African championships and at the 2023 World Fencing Championships, where in foil he placed 78th out of 177 participants. [5] [12] He competed at the African Olympic qualifying tournaments in 2024, but finished sixth in foil due to an injury. [5] However, he was afterwards invited to compete at the 2024 Summer Olympics in foil on a universality selection. [13] He became the first Olympic fencer in Cape Verde's history. [5]
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