Ricardo and Selma created Lar Cocuzzi and, through sport, gave the opportunity to more than 300 children in the 30 years of the project
A night that seemed normal changed his life. Ricardo and Selma Cocuzzi. A little over 30 years ago, the couple found a little boy next to a trash can and decided to adopt him. A few months later, the Lar Cocuzzi, space where the two began to give a better chance of life to more than 300 children using the Cycling.
“We didn’t plan things much. We just did it and it all happened until today. I can’t say that we thought about it much, that we did it imagining it could become Home, that it could be like this. We understood that we had to do something from the beginning. first child until today. We lost count of how many children were at the House, but we consider ourselves one big family and that’s how we live,” said Selma explaining the origin of everything.
The use of cycling also came naturally. Ricardo and Selma were already playing sports and saw in it a way to show a new option so that the “new children” could develop, grow and evolve. “Cycling was one of the paths, but not the only one. I think the relationship Ricardo and I already had with the sport made it easier. We started teaching what we knew at the beginning and it grew the children they were learning and evolving every day. The training routine was getting more frequent, competitions appearing and everything,” Selma said.
HOME ARRIVES ON THE PODIUM
Shortly after adopting their first child, Selma became pregnant for the first time. As with all the children adopted by the couple, Luiz Henrique Cocuzzi began to live with other children and teenagers and cycling became part of his daily life.
Years later, Luiz Henrique opted for mountain biking and grew up in the sport. Currently, the son of Ricardo and Selma won the Brazilian seven times in sports, was the Pan-American champion and was at the Tokyo Olympics. In Henrique’s words, everything he achieved was due to one thing.
“Everything I am is due to home. Because of my brothers. I am who I am in sports and outside of it because of what I achieved down there with Lar Cocuzzi. I was born into it, grew up in it, and I hear you still part of it no matter where you are” said Luiz Henrique Cocuzzi.
In recent years, Lar Cocuzzi has taken cycling one step further. Ricardo and Selma’s sons started not only training mountain bikes, but also racing for the Lar Cocuzzi Team. While he’s not an athlete on the family team, Luiz Henrique knows he’s been in the top seed of the team in the past.
“When we started racing, my embarrassment remained, without the best equipment and structure there, in the end we liked it and that was passed on from one house to another. I was signing up, fixing the bike, but in the end it worked out with the help of so many people. Today it’s really nice to know that there is a team and that my brothers can follow,” said the athlete.
HOW DO I PAY THE BILL?
Over the years and his presence in competitions, Lar Cocuzzi began to gain notoriety. In the midst of cycling, the story of Selma and Ricardo with the children is viewed with respect, affection and admiration by all, but it does not stop everyone in the house from having a hard time.
“The situation has changed with the pandemic. Before it was relatively peaceful, we had everything we wanted and needed for everyone. Now it’s not like that. I know it made things difficult for everyone, but today we have no company to help us help”. I have a group of friends who help me with what they can and when they can, just like individuals. Sometimes Henrique makes a “baby” with some things. But it’s getting more and more complicated to deal with everything,” Selma said.
Source: Terra
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