Sergio Toledo Machado

Sergio de Toledo Machado, known throughout Brazilian basketball as Sergio Macarrao, was a Rio de Janeiro forward whose generation gave Brazil its last Olympic medal in men's basketball. He died on 12 September 2026 at the age of 81. The Brazilian Basketball Confederation confirmed his death; the cause was not made public. Olympedia records place the death in Teresopolis, Rio de Janeiro state.

Born in Rio de Janeiro on 24 February 1945, Machado earned the nickname Macarrao as a skinny teenager taking his first serious shots. He stood about 191 cm and weighed around 88 kg in his playing years. Botafogo developed him in its youth system, and he went on to wear the shirts of all four of Rio's traditional big clubs: Botafogo, Flamengo, Vasco da Gama and Fluminense. Later stops included Sao Caetano, and he finished his club career at Mackenzie in Sao Paulo in 1981.

Called up to the senior Brazilian national team at seventeen in 1962, he was already a fixture when Brazil travelled to the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. Playing six games in that tournament, he helped the Selecao take bronze, still Brazil's most recent Olympic medal in men's basketball. Four years later he returned for the Mexico City Games, where Brazil finished fourth. Between those Games he won World Championship bronze in Uruguay in 1967 and silver in Yugoslavia in 1970. He also shared in the 1968 South American championship and took Pan American Games bronze in 1975.

Family ties kept the Macarrao name on Brazilian courts for decades after he retired. His brother Rene Machado played club basketball in the 1960s and 1970s. Nephews Duda Machado and Marcelinho Machado both reached the senior national team; Marcelinho became one of the most recognisable Brazilian players of his era. Olympedia lists Sergio as Marcelinho's uncle.

The Brazilian Olympic Committee and the CBB issued notes of condolence that stressed his place in one of the sport's defining national generations. Teammates and fans remembered a quiet competitor whose thin frame as a youth never limited a career that reached Olympic, world and continental podiums. In an era when Brazilian men's basketball still contended with Europe and the United States, Macarrao was a constant selection through the mid-1960s and into the 1970s.

He is remembered as an Olympic bronze medallist, a world silver and bronze medallist, and a link between Rio club basketball and a family that kept producing elite players. Public reporting at his death focused on the record rather than private life, leaving family arrangements to those closest to him. What the public record holds is clear: a Botafogo product who became a national-team regular, helped Brazil stand on an Olympic podium in Tokyo, and closed a long club career at Mackenzie in 1981.