Patrícia Mamona is a Portuguese triple jumper. In October 2018, two years away from the 2020 Tokyo Olympics (which were then postponed to 2021 due to the Covid-19 pandemic), I started visiting Patrícia’s training sessions at Centro de Alto Rendimento do Jamor in Lisbon. We had a simple arrangement: I could film or photograph without restrictions as long as she didn’t have to interrupt any of the exercises. Her discretion and focus made me feel almost invisible, as I either anticipated some of her exercises or was overtaken by others.

Her lonely and repetitive training routine involves a careful balancing act of the body and mind, juggling determination and ambition with exhaustion and anxiety, often being months away from any competition.
As she enters the training ground, Patrícia knows that she is her only competitor.

It was a long and complicit process that lasted until September 2021, a month after she won the silver medal at the Tokyo Olympics, setting a new personal and national record of 15.01 meters.

José Pedro Cortes

Patrícia is the portrait of a solitary performer, of the body and mind at work.
Throughout the book we feel the experience of the training routine of an Olympic athlete, as we watch, in a parallel montage, a sequence of images of her winning jump at the Tokyo Olympics.

Patrícia
Published by Pierre von Kleist editions, 2023
15.1x21 cm, hardcover with dust jacket, 184 pages
Buy it at www.pierrevonkleist.com