(26 Jun 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Niteroi, Brazil – 26 June 2025
1. Canoeing group Va’a Roses pushing the canoe to the water at Charitas beach
2. Various of women from Va’a Roses rowing
3. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Anna Lucia Amorim, 63, cancer survivor and first project participant:
“When you receive a diagnosis that you have a 5% survival chance and 13 years later you’re here… Every time you put the paddle in the water, it’s like a renewal. Every paddle in the water, every breath, it’s a new life, like I was waking up."
4. Various aerial shots of Roses group rowing ++MUTE++
5. Various of group rowing
6. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Letícia Mendez, 66, project creator:
“We’ve been with this project for 7 years and our goal is to reach the most ‘little roses’ visiting cancer treatment hospitals so they can come, exercise and have a better quality of life.”
7. Group rowing close to Charitas beach shore
8. Group returning to the shore
9. SOUNDBITE (Portuguese) Isabel Swan, 41, vice-mayor of Niteroi:
“Vania works directly with me, she had breast cancer and started rowing and it changed her life. She always says, very emotionally, of the impact that it is to overcome such hardship like breast cancer and start rowing in your own rhythm, in you’re healing process.”
10. Group cheering and singing UPSOUND (Portuguese) “It was worth it!” at the end of the training session
STORYLINE:
When breast cancer turned her life upside down, Anna Lucia Amorim, a 63-year-old Brazilian from Rio de Janeiro state, fell into a deep depression sometimes struggling to get out of bed.
But everything changed, she said, after she started practicing Va’a canoeing in Niteroi, a city facing Rio across Guanabara Bay, with other women who have battled cancer or were undergoing treatment.
“Every time you put the paddle in the water, it’s like a new life,” she told The Associated Press on Thursday. “When you are there, you forget everything. You only see the sea and the sky.”
Amorim is part of Va’a Roses, a group of cancer patients and survivors between the ages of 52 and 70 who partake in local and national competitions of Va’a canoeing.
Originating in the Pacific region, Va’a canoes — which traditionally have outriggers and can be single or double-hull — are now popular worldwide.
In Niteroi, the Va’a Roses train twice weekly just after 7 a.m., departing from the sheltered Charitas Beach surrounded by harbors and sloping mountains, from which one can spot the famed Christ the Redeemer statue.
Guanabara Bay has a reputation for being polluted by garbage and sewage, but members of the Va’a Roses say they regularly see turtles, rays and other fish — even dolphins.
Polynesian canoeing and water sports in general have become increasingly popular in Niteroi over the last few years, said Isabel Swan, the municipality’s deputy mayor who has an Olympic bronze medal in sailing. The number of Polynesian canoeing clubs in the area has jumped from five to around 40 in the last decade.
In August, Niteroi will host the Va’a long distance world championship in which around a thousand athletes from 30 countries will compete. And alongside Rio, the city is a candidate to host the 2031 Pan American Games.
AP Video shot by Mario Lobão produced by Diarlei Rodrigues
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