When I hit it with the shovel, I started howling. That's why they know me as 'the wolf'
Juan Lebron
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From the other side of the net, Juan Lebron looks at me, prepares the serve and tells me:
–Where do you want it?
–¿Cómooooo?
–Where do you want me to place the service: do you want it in the T, or angled, or long and low and directed towards the wall?
-I don't know. Take it out and that's it – she replied.
I am risking a lot, because Juan Lebron (28), the wolf, is a figure of padel: he has been number 1 on the World Padel Tour for four years.
“Well, here it goes,” he says.
And take out.
And he hits and the ball comes low and apparently inclined towards the wall, with an impossible effect, so impossible that I am unable to decipher the blow. I'm a penguin with a shovel in my hand, I barely move from the spot. I eat the service.
“Come on, another serve,” Juan Lebron tells me, generously, when he notices my confusion.
And he throws another totally different serve, and I don't see the ball either, and now, I give up, up to this point, I don't play anymore.
Frustrated, I leave the paddle tennis court, that magnificent blue carpet stage elevated to the 55th floor of the Emperador Castellana tower, in Madrid, and I prepare to interview Eric Babolat (53), the CEO of Babolat, the firm that has designed a line of clothing and rackets for Lebron, the king of paddle tennis, and also makes strings and rackets for Carlos Alcaraz and Rafael Nadal, kings of tennis.
(Well, that, the interview with Eric Babolat, is the reason that has brought me to the tower, and not my blushing at Lebron).
(...)
Be surprised, reader: Babolat is a sports equipment company specialized in tennis, paddle tennis and badminton, but it is also a surname.
–How many people are surprised by that! Some don't believe that Babolat is a surname – Eric Babolat, whose story goes back a long way, tells me.
(And it's true: Babolat sounds like anything but a surname.)
It has been 148 years since Pierre Babolat, Eric's great-great-grandfather, had assembled the first string for a tennis racket. Over time, his firm was going to be the main stringer of the first edition of Roland Garros, that of 1891.
–And the weight of the last name came upon you –I emphasize.
–I didn't have any knowledge yet and I was already inside the company. I was still a child, and I already saw my grandfather dealing with Bjorn Borg, who was the star of the time. I felt all that as a genetic issue, in the same way that now I am the one who talks with Leo, Borg's son, who has been Swedish junior champion.
–Do you play tennis?
–Tennis and paddle tennis. But my level is very average. There are people in the company who play much better than me. Even so, I already began to relate to tennis as a child on the court that my grandfather had at home. Although I always did it for fun, never to compete. Because it didn't give...
–And when you play, do you notice the difference between one string and another?
–I can feel if a product is more powerful or more flexible. But I can never feel it like a star does.
–You became CEO of Babolat when your father died in a plane crash. You were only 28 years old. Do you think you were already ready for the challenge?
–Technically, I wasn't. Although I knew well how the company worked and I was committed. I had already been working in the marketing area for years. It knows what to do.
-Do you have brothers?
-A sister.
–And what did she do?
–I share the property with her, but she was never interested and does not work with us. She is a lawyer.
(When Eric Babolat took over, he himself tells me, the company was eminently tennis. With a Babolat in hand, three tennis players were going to shine at the 1998 Roland Garros: Carlos Moyá won the individual title; Fernando González, the junior ; Kim Clijsters, junior doubles).
–Even then, we decided to become number 1 in ten years. We did it.
-And his sons?
–I have a twenty-year-old and a 16-year-old. They know that the firm must continue, but I don't know what they will decide. By the way, my daughter lives in Barcelona: she studies Communication and Marketing at Blanquerna.
