Born in São Tomé, Gomes moved to Lisbon when she was 11. When she was 17, she joined Portuguese sports club Sporting CP and applied for Portuguese citizenship. She initially competed at international events as a representative of São Tomé and Príncipe before becoming a naturalised citizen of Portugal in 2001, upon which she changed her sport nationality. At the international level, she began competing exclusively in long jump after 2005. During her career, she set the Portuguese record in women's long jump 14 times, raising it from 6.56 metres to 7.12 metres.
In 2012, Gomes ruptured the Achilles tendon in her left leg but underwent a successful operation. However, additional prolonged injuries kept her away from the track from 2013 onward, and in 2015 she announced her retirement from competition. She has since become a physiotherapist.
Early life
Enezaide do Rosário da Vera Cruz Gomes was born on 20 November 1979 in São Tomé, the capital and largest city of São Tomé and Príncipe.[1][2][3] She spent most of her childhood in São Tomé with her family, which she later described as having been, during her childhood, "[not] wealthy... but never lack[ing] anything either."[2] According to Gomes, her family had always called her by the nickname "Naide", a shortened form of her given name Enezaide.[2] When Gomes was five, her mother moved to Lisbon, Portugal, due to health problems. She consequently lived with her grandmother for a few years before joining her mother in Lisbon when she was 11.[2] She adapted well to life in Lisbon, as her family already spoke Portuguese natively.[2] She later said that she "had quite a good education in São Tomé", which was "quite strict" in comparison to her education in Lisbon.[2]
Gomes began training for competitive athletics at the age of 13 but quickly stopped, believing her training to be interfering with her academic studies. However, about a year later, while living in the parish of Fernão Ferro, across the Tagus Estuary from Lisbon, a physical education teacher convinced Gomes of her talent and encouraged her to resume training.[2] When she was 17, she joined Sporting CP and met Abreu Matos, who would become her longtime coach. According to Gomes, by that time she "was among the best heptathletes and high jumpers in Portugal", and Sporting CP and the Portuguese Athletics Federation had begun pressuring her to become a Portuguese citizen.[2][4] She applied for Portuguese citizenship soon thereafter but would not receive it until four years later, when she was 21.[4]
Career
Debut for São Tomé and Príncipe (1998–2000)
Gomes began competing internationally as a representative of her birth country São Tomé and Príncipe. Her first competition was the 1998 Ibero-American Championships in Athletics, held in Lisbon from 17 to 19 July, in which she placed sixth in the high jump event with a distance of 1.75 metres.[5]
At the 2002 European Athletics Championships, she competed in the women's long jump and heptathlon events. She placed tenth in the long jump event with a best distance of 6.23 metres, and eighteenth in the heptathlon with a score of 5142 points. She was unable to complete the 800 metre race in the heptathlon event.[13]
She won gold at the 2004 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Budapest, Hungary, in the women's pentathlon event held on 5 March.[1] She ended the event with a score of 4,759 points, the lowest ever total for a first-place finish in the IAAF World Indoor Championships.[17] At the 2004 Ibero-American Championships in Athletics, held in Huelva, Spain, from 6 to 8 August, Gomes competed in three events: long jump, shot put, and javelin throw. She placed fourth in the long jump event with a distance of 6.36 metres, and eleventh in both the shot put and javelin throw events, with distances of 13.8 metres and 38.46 metres, respectively.[18] She competed in the women's heptathlon event at the 2004 Summer Olympics in Athens, Greece. She finished thirteenth with a score of 6151 points.[19]
At the 2005 World Championships in Athletics in Helsinki, Finland, Gomes competed in the heptathlon and long jump events. She placed seventh in the heptathlon event, held from 6 to 7 August, with a score of 6,189 points.[22] For the qualification round of the long jump event, held on 9 August, Gomes was placed in the first heat. She placed eighth in her heat with a distance of 6.42 metres and failed to advance to the final.[23] Gomes saw better results at the women's long jump event of the 2005 Summer Universiade, held in İzmir, Turkey, from 15 to 16 August. She advanced to the final after finishing first in the qualification round with a distance of 6.52 metres.[24] She went on to win silver in the final with a distance of 6.56 metres.[25]
Two weeks before the 2008 IAAF World Indoor Championships in Valencia, Spain, held from 7 to 9 March, Gomes once again set a Portuguese record for indoor long jump with a distance of 6.93 metres, beating her previous record by three centimetres.[30] She went on to win her second gold at the World Indoor Championships, this time in the women's long jump event with a final distance of 7 metres.[31]
Gomes' strong performances throughout 2008 led analysts to view her as a favourite to win gold in the women's long jump event at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China. A month before the games, she had set a season's best of 7.12 metres, her best ever result. However, Gomes fouled on her first two attempts at the Olympic event, before stutter-stepping on her final attempt and ending with a distance of 6.29 metres, placing her 32nd overall (later changed to 31st following the disqualification of silver medalist Tatyana Lebedeva).[34][35]
On 10 June 2012, Gomes underwent a successful operation for a ruptured Achilles tendon in her left leg. This injury forced her to miss the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, United Kingdom.[44]
On 26 March 2015, Gomes announced her retirement from competitive athletics at the age of 35, in a special news conference made alongside close friends and her longtime coach Abreu Matos. She cited prolonged injuries, which had kept her away from competition since 2013, as the main reason for her retirement. An injury to her supporting foot kept her from competing, and a knee injury required surgery. Gomes expressed pride in her career, in which she earned 11 medals at the international level, as well as a desire to become a coach or physiotherapist to remain in professional athletics. She also announced that she was expecting her first child.[41][45]
Gomes ultimately chose to become a physiotherapist after her retirement from athletics. She later served as an ambassador for the 2022 São Silvestre El Corte Inglés, an annual running event in Lisbon.[46]
^"Universiadit, 1. päivä" [Universiade, Day 1]. Kunniakierros (in Finnish). 16 August 2005. Archived from the original on 6 October 2014. Retrieved 24 October 2024.
^ ab"Naide Gomes anuncia fim de carreira" [Naide Gomes announces the end of her career]. Noticias ao Minuto (in Portuguese). 26 March 2015. Retrieved 25 October 2024.
^"Naide Gomes anuncia final de carreira" [Naide Gomes announces the end of her career]. Rádio Renascença (in Portuguese). 26 March 2015. Retrieved 25 October 2024. Durante o anúncio da despedida, Naide Gomes revelou ainda estar grávida, de 15 semanas.... 'Vou ser mãe e vou ter muito com que me ocupar. Estou feliz por ser mãe e obviamente por terminar a grande carreira que tive', reforçou.
^ abcAndrade, Sequeira (June 2010). Os recordes nacionais de atletismo e outras histórias [The national records in athletics and other stories] (1st ed.). Prime Books. p. 149. ISBN978-989-655-073-8.