O mito contemporâneo da heroína esportiva: da guerra ao pódio.

Objective: to identify the social imaginary transmitted by the media about women athletes considered athletic heroines and to identify the discourses on the gender differences transmitted by the media in the Rio 2016 Olympic Games. Methods: this is a descriptive research of documentary analysis, whose methodological strategy consisted in the search of stories about Rio 2016 heroines in the Google site. The reports were analyzed using the Discourse Order Analysis of Michel Foucault. Results: the principles of inversion, discontinuity, specificity and exteriority, as established by Foucault, were present in the discourses analyzed. In the reports, women considered to be sport heroines were highlighted when they won the first Olympic medal in the country of origin, when they performed great plays in decisive games and when they overcame sexual abuse. Conclusion: however, even though they were considered sport heroines, the image of these women was associated with the male figure. This highlights the need for advances in the area of equal rights between men and women in society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]