The wonderful thing about learning something is that no one can take it away from us.
BB King
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–Look, that's my classroom – Dani López Pinedo (42) tells me–: I spend Tuesday afternoons there.
And with his finger he points to a room on the third floor of the Eada building, in Barcelona's Eixample.
And he moves through those corridors, through the corridors of the School of Senior Management and Administration, because he has taken all of this with his studies –he is pursuing a postgraduate degree in Human Resources– very seriously.
And what he does.
Dani López Pinedo understands that there is life after those balls.
(actually he already understood it before, when he stopped balls in a water polo pool, this does not come to him again)
Dani López Pineda understands that at the age of thirty or, in his case, at forty, that bubble within which he has been swaying deflates, and then the elite athlete peers into a deep, dark hole, a hole that he had previously interpreted as a distant future and that now, suddenly, is the present.
An abyss of half a century, which is what comes next.
Half a century or more, come on, let's be optimistic in life.
(For almost fifteen years, Dani López Pinedo has been the goalkeeper of the Spanish water polo team and the wall of CN Barceloneta: he has podiums in World and European Championships and has won fifteen consecutive Leagues; he retired this June)
-And so? I ask him.
(We have finally sat down in a classroom; Dani López Pinedo seems like my teacher: he talks to me and I take notes at full speed)
-Let's see, I think athletes have changed. In water polo there is hardly any middle class. At thirty years old, either you have managed to reach the national team or you understand that you will not live from this. And the selection only reaches a very minor elite.
-And so? I insist.
–We veterans have a responsibility to tell young athletes that they should think about something other than sport. And there are many training plans so that they are not left without doing anything. I give talks at Barceloneta (he is the club's Human Resources manager), I talk to the kids and parents. In water polo we have had role models, players who have made a career out of the pool. In fact, we lost Miki Linares because he preferred to be a doctor (he retired at the age of 23). Alberto Munárriz is an engineer. Marc Larumbe, the same...
-But the generation that preceded you...
– We owe a lot to our predecessors and their mistakes. Maradona came back as he came back, they put him under the shower and to play. Nowadays, if you have a drink you get portrayed in all the media...
-So, elite sport is not a trap?
-In water polo, no. The reality of Olympic sport is what it is, and normally you don't make a living. Another thing is other sports where there is more money. There can be traps there.
–And how did you get into water polo?
-Behind all this was Tere, my mother.
–¿...?
-My mother was thirty years old and did not know how to swim, and then she decided that she wanted to learn and she signed up for the pool at our school, in the Maristes de Les Corts. I accompanied her and swam too, and that way we made it easy for each other. I was Pinedo's son! Then a teacher set up a water polo team and I got into it when I was twelve years old.
And did you always want to be a goalkeeper? Look that the goalkeeper does not score goals...
-Juan Ramón Jiménez, my first coach, was the one who decided. If the boy swam the breaststroke well, it meant that he had legs and was worth to be a goalkeeper.
–And did you like it?
I never rebelled. I understood that I was better at goal than any other position. And there was something I liked...
-The fact that?
-If you fail, you pay for it. And if you're right, it looks great. And how I liked to save the partner!
– And what does he do now?
–I am going to encourage Nuria, my wife, who swims long journeys. And I'm going to see Paula, my eight-year-old daughter, who has already started with water polo, although that hasn't been my thing, eh? That the CN Sabadell captured it!
And he says goodbye quickly and running.
He gets on his big motorcycle and goes to pick up the girl, who immediately leaves school.
