And so the illusion goes away

Sofia was six years old when she went to immerse herself in the world of ice skating.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
22 December 2022 Thursday 03:33
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And so the illusion goes away

Sofia was six years old when she went to immerse herself in the world of ice skating. It was 2016.

(Sofía exists, it is not a figurative name: I know her in person, she is a charming creature).

Sofía skated on the rink attached to the Palau Blaugrana, a scene historically frequented by thousands of Barcelonans and tourists, teenagers who laugh when they hit the ice on their buttocks and little kids who move as awkwardly as they are cautiously, often hand in hand with their fathers.

Sofia didn't skate like those, like teenagers or children who paid a few euros to spend the afternoon.

Sofia, rather, floated.

And she liked ice skating so much, she was so good at it, that her parents had decided to federate her and then the girl had become part of the club, to defend the Barça shield and train at the facility, sooner or later no, to practice an Axel, a Flip or a Loop.

“Sofía had spent seven years skating there,” Monika, her mother, tells me.

The mother also tells me that it's over.

And not because of the will (or lack of will) of the girl, but because of a lack of means. It turns out that the facility, the Barça skating rink, has been busted since last March.

The fault is structural. And the solution is extraordinarily complex – a source from the club tells me.

And since that day when the white ice melted, the skaters melted to black. Among them, Sofia. While the club was looking for urgent solutions, all of them unsuccessful (moving the track to the Palau car park, a possibility vetoed by the City Council; taking it to other areas of the club, a possibility that doesn't work either because Barça opens ditches everywhere), the skaters were left without alternatives: in these months, the Eixample Skating has also closed, mortally wounded by the pandemic.

–And where do the skaters train? I ask the same source.

–They have to go to Puigcerdà, or Andorra. The club covers the travel expenses of the coaches.

That's right, you've read it: the club covers the coaches, not its federated athletes.

So Monika had spent time taking Sofía to Andorra, late yes late no, paying for the tolls and gasoline, so that the girl could continue skating.

"Until I said enough, of course," he tells me.

–And Sofia? What does she think?

"It's been six months since you quit skating. He has already lost the illusion for discipline. Almost, he doesn't even remember.

And so football grows and the rest lives hard.