Family worry as banned Olympic marathon runner goes missing
Elite runner Daniel Nascimento is believed to have last been seen in June
The worried family of an Olympic marathon runner have launched appeal to find him after he went missing from his family home.
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Daniel Nascimento, from Brazil, vanished from the house with just his backpack, his mother Valdirene de Paula Ferreira said.
She said on Instagram on Tuesday morning: "Does anyone have any information about my son? His name is Daniel Nascimento, better-known by the nickname Armero. He was a marathon runner."
Nascimento is said to have left his family home in Paraguacu Paulista, in the south-west of the state of Sao Paulo, with just a black backpack with him.
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He was last sighted on the evening of June 19 but his relatives are believed to have only formally reported him missing to police this week, and made the appeal shortly after on the eve of his 28th birthday.
The athlete made history in April 2022 by setting a South American and Americas area record of two hours, 4 minutes and 51 seconds at the Seoul Marathon, which secured him a third place finish.
That triumph qualified him for the Paris Olympic Games but he tested positive for steroids a month before he was due to run.
It landed him a five-year ban issued in May last year, which excluded him from the 2028 LA Olympics.
His worried mother admitted she thought he was struggling to cope with the ban.
The mother-of-five Ms Ferreira said: "Since he was banned from competing, he was with me, under my care.
"I would go to work and he would come with me. He was always a good boy.
"Sometimes I used to take him out for a run. He would do some training sessions in secret in the middle of the sugarcane fields. I think he really missed the routine of being an athlete."
Nascimento also made headlines at the 2020 Tokyo Games after he was one of many runners who were forced to withdraw from the marathon.
He collapsed twice amid 30-degree heat around 15 miles in, before collapsing again minutes later.