–The life of the marcher is what it is –Álvaro Martín (29) told us this Thursday in the mixed zone of the Plaza de los Héroes, in the heart of Budapest.
A quarter of an hour earlier, she had added the gold of the 35 km walk to the gold of the 20 km that she had collected a few days earlier, a feat that only another walker has managed to emulate, María Pérez, champion in both events these days in Budapest , never seen in a World Cup: two walkers from the same country monopolizing the four races of the march.
-And what is that marcher's life? We asked Álvaro Martín.
–It is the life of having dinner at seven and going to bed at ten and the next day, double training session, and the next day, the same again. I'm going to tell you an anecdote, but I'll do it without giving names, eh?, which is called the sin, not the sinner.
-Tell me...
-This very night, the night before our race, it was three thirty in the morning and all the walkers were already having breakfast (the test started at seven in the morning) when a couple of colleagues who had already entered the hotel they had competed the day before, they came to a party, and they looked at us surprised, and they said: 'But...'. But that's nothing, that this is the life of the marchers... And either we like it a lot, or we are crazy.
The crazy ones, or those who love what they do, sometimes receive their prize.
(...)
While Álvaro Martín, a graduate in Politics and two subjects away from graduating in Law, attends to us, María Pérez (27) writhes in pain.
He shrugs his stomach, says "it's just that I can't", but he stays upright, and listens to us and attends to us, and at some point he even says:
"I don't even know how I did it. It is that he did not have anything clear or that he could compete.
And he shows us the bandage on his left thigh, a bandage to protect the sciatic nerve, a sore nerve since the other Sunday, the day of his victory in the 20 km, when he had left the group, had gone towards his first gold, and he had felt the twinge in his hamstring, what a rush from then until the end.
"If it hadn't been for the physiotherapists, for Miquel Àngel Cos and Patricia Morales, I don't know what would have happened to me," he says.
And she portrays herself in the last three days, three days of nerves: she had barely been able to give a swimming session at the Santa Margarita spa.
"And the slightly progressive sessions on the tapestry," said María Pérez. Three days ago she could barely march two or three kilometers at 9 km/h. And the day before yesterday, already a little better, it already gave him six kms at 12 km/h. In short, the key has been to hold on to the confidence and good vibes that the environment generated for me. And in following the medical protocols and the instructions that the technicians had given me, like Jacinto Antón, my coach.
The strategy: if you feel pain in the 35 km, go. And no sudden changes, because it is that, the sudden changes, which can end up tensing the sciatic. And if the sciatic becomes tense, there is nothing to do anymore.
The development of the strategy: María Pérez, the powerful 2018 European champion who has never shone in a World Cup or in a Games (fourth in Tokyo 2020), is embedded in the leading group, among the six or seven gold contenders Among them are the Polish Zdzieblo, the Chinese Qieyang, the Greek Ntrimspioti and the Peruvian Kimberly García, and among them she moves comfortably, at rates of 4m25s per km.
And then he sees that Zdzieblo, who has taken three seconds of margin, limps and receives warnings. That the china breaks down. That the rest does not take the initiative.
So the initiative, she takes it.
At km 21, María Pérez takes a step forward, and then many more steps, and raises the demand for effort, opening a gap of four seconds over Kimberly García, which is then seven and then twenty.
And there, at km 23, Kimberly García, two-time world champion in Eugene 2022, watches how the small figure of María Pérez dwarfs until she is lost on the horizon, a tiny bullet from Granada whose talent has exploded these days in Budapest, who would have Said six months ago, when there were all doubts, a consequence of her style of military march, a way of doing things that had earned her the antipathy of the judges: disqualified in the Eugene World Cup, disqualified in the European Championship in Munich.
"Only we know what María has gone through to correct her technique," said Álvaro Martín, both hugging each other in the mixed zone. She is a great fighter. After everything she has experienced last year, and despite being touched in these 35 km, she has gone for it all.
-And you?
And he nods, says:
–To win, I had to resort to psychology: because I realized that, physically, I couldn't. I have seen it when attacking at km 29, when Pintado and Kawano caught me. In the last 2,000 I have thought: 'psychology strip'. And for this reason, even though I was dead, I have attacked Pintado again, and there I think I have thrown him off balance.
(And despite all these wonderful follies, the discipline is still in danger of extinction.)
