Meet Hugo Calderano, the Brazilian vegetarian table tennis star who speaks seven languages and can solve a Rubik’s Cube in nine seconds
He speaks seven languages, can solve a Rubik’s Cube in nine seconds on average, and can name the capital of every country.Brazilian 27-year-old Hugo Calderano may be a mental wizard now but at the age of 13, he had to make a potentially life-altering decision.
With his parents being physical education teachers, he was into various sports but excelled at two – volleyball and table tennis. They backed him to become a professional athlete, but asked him to pick one sport and focus on it.
Being Brazilian, they perhaps thought he would pick volleyball, the country’s second-most popular sport after football. After all, he had participated in regular competitions and was even drafted into the state team while on the other hand, there weren’t too many top Brazilian star paddlers he could look u...