India, May 3 -- "If you knew my story, you would never believe that I would become the greatest Olympic athlete from Brazil," Rebeca Andrade, 25, Brazil's most decorated Olympian and the most successful Latin American gymnast of all time, said last week.

Seated next to legendary gymnast Nadia Comaneci, she had a room full of journalists enthralled in Madrid, a day ahead of the Laureus World Sports Awards ceremony. Funny, charming and open to giving long, detailed, deeply felt answers to every question asked of her, Andrade is a journalist's dream come true.

She won the Laureus Comeback of the Year award for recovering from not one, not two, but three ACL surgeries (the all-important ligament that runs across the knee joint) to win a spa...