In 1973, coached by Pedro Henrique de Toledo, he broke the junior triple jump world record at the South American Athletics Championships with the mark of 14.75 m. In 1975, already as an adult athlete at the Pan American Games in Mexico City, the corporal of the Brazilian Army won the gold medal in the long jump with the mark of 8.19 m and, on October 15, also the gold medal in the triple jump, with the incredible mark of 17.89 m, breaking the world record of this modality in 45 cm, that belonged to the Soviet Viktor Saneyev.

Several jumps of winning distance by both Oliveira and Ian Campbell of Australia were adjudged as fouls by the all-Soviet judging panel, despite video replays showing this was not the case.

These decisions resulted in Soviet athletes Jaak Uudmäe and Viktor Saneyev winning the competition with performances in the low 17-metre area.

[2][3] Only in 2000, twenty years after the Moscow Games, the Australian newspaper The Sydney Morning Herald, the largest in Australia, made a major report demonstrating that the Brazilian's canceled jumps were part of a Soviet operation to give Saneyev the fourth Olympic title.

His Brazilian and South American record was only broken more than twenty-one years later, by Jadel Gregório, with 17.90 m, in Belém, on May 20, 2007 (who coincidentally was also an athlete of João do Pulo's former coach).