This study aims to understand how the participation of a Brazilian athlete in the 1932 summer Olympic games in Los Angeles was represented as a model of behaviour by newspapers in Brazil. This research is characterized as a historical documentary study, with newspapers as the empirical material. For the documental corpus of the research, reports on Adalberto Cardoso were collected from Brazilian newspapers. The 1932 Olympic games were approached with great expectation by the Brazilian press that, while showing the great financial crisis that was devastating the country, was following the unfolding of one of the biggest civil revolutions in Brazilian history. In this scenario, there are reports that addressed the participation of Brazilian athletes in the 1932 Olympic games, whose behaviours were categorized into good and bad athlete models. Among the athletes mentioned in the reports, Adalberto Cardoso, who ran the 10,000 m race, was called ‘iron man’ by the public and the newspapers.