Rio de Janeiro: The childhood pastime of throwing mangoes at each other in the Amazon has turned into a serious sport in Brazil, even finding a place among the vaunted beach games played in Rio de Janeiro.
On the hot golden sands of Copacabana, players simultaneously throw two mango-shaped balls over a net in a fast, fun and tiring test of their reflexes.
A new game dubbed “manbol” – a portmanteau of mango and ball – is slowly spreading across the beaches of Rio, where Brazilian sports enthusiasts indulge in activities such as netball, beach tennis and volleyball.
It is the brainchild of Rui Hildebrando, based on a game he and his younger brother Rogerio played as children in the Amazonian town of Belem do Para.
“At first it was a simple game between us: my brother Rogerio threw a mango at me and I threw it back to him. But after a while I thought it would be more fun if everyone threw the mango at the same time.” 44-year-old Rui Hildebrando told AFP.
After it caught on among the young people of the city, Hildebrando came up with the official rules of the game and in 2004 decided to establish the Brazilian Manbol Confederation.
The game is now played with mango-shaped polyurethane balls, about 3 times the size of a rugby ball, on a rectangular field on any surface.
The rules are simple: You score a point if the ball flies over the net and hits the ground on your opponent’s side – if you also catch the second ball thrown to your side. If both balls land, the point is replayed.
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To win, a team must win two sets of 12 points each. Each game can be played with up to three players, with a match lasting between 15 and 25 minutes.
“It’s a very dynamic sport and the fact that there are two balls makes it a lot of fun. It’s tiring, but it’s a matter of practice,” said Adriana Mathias, 46, a physical education teacher who has been playing since 2007.
After two decades, manbol is gaining ground in Brazil with around 2,000 players in a country of over 200 million people. There are regional federations in Rio de Janeiro, the capital Brasília, northeastern Ceara and northern Para.
The city of Belem declared manbol an official “sports discipline” in 2016. Hildebrando said there have been demonstrations of the game in 11 other countries, in South America, Europe and Asia.
In June last year, a match was played for President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva during an official visit to Belem, which will host the COP30 climate talks in 2025.
“It is an inclusive sport that can be played by people of any age or social class. Manbol has everything it needs to grow,” said Katia Lessa, president of the Rio Manbol Federation, which dreams of the game becoming an Olympic sport. day.
