As soon as I get on the bus, heading to the charming new stadium in Budapest, the kid notices my accreditation.
I know because he stares down at my card, reads my name, and gives me a cheeky look.
I wonder what he's seeing, what he's thinking. Could he have taken me for a technician, a physio, a doctor...?
"An athlete?", I came to ask myself, presumptuous me.
As the kid looks at me, I look at him. And now I'm the one watching him: I see how he looks down at his cell phone, I sense that he's typing my name and googling. He'll be finding out who I am. He reads something, scrutinizes the screen, I understand that he has found me – “egosurfing” is the name of this experience, Llucia Ramis said.
He has found me, so he sharpens his face and looks at me again.
“Yeah, it's me, kid,” I tell him with a look.
And immediately afterwards, the kid looks away and loses interest in me and I go back to my journalistic chores.
I will never be a famous guy.
(...)
Five hours after winning her world title in the 20 km walk (the second gold for the Spaniards in these World Cups, what a streak, a title per day they go), María Pérez (27) sits in the Spanish room of the Grand Hotel, in the resort of Isla Margarita, and there all together contemplate the victory of women's football in Oceania, and someone says:
–Look, María, world champions like you.
And she, hesitant, answers:
-Yeah, but I'm the individual champion...
And everyone laughs, because María Pérez has come down, and with good reason. Athletics is an individual sport, but it is also a humble sport, a sport for unknown people who come and go on buses, subways and planes, almost always anonymous, especially when they are not jogging in their shorts.
Sure, María Pérez is the world champion in the 20 km walk (and also the 2018 European champion), but she won't be famous either.
(Famous, for example, will be Salma Paralluelo, the soccer world champion who was going to be an athlete and who had decided to hang up the spikes and put on her boots because in soccer there is more money, more fame, and more media presence: look at the space that, today, are occupied by soccer players and athletes).
"What I really wanted was to shake off the chocolate medal from the Tokyo Games," said a few hours before, still in Budapest's Heroes' Square, the small, thin and compact walker, with her 1.58m, the grenaino accent and deep gaze
And he went back in time.
For example, to Tokyo: fourth then, just as Álvaro Martín had been fourth, now gold in Budapest, gold like her.
And, even more painful: it was going back to last year.
The fateful year
She had suffered two great tests, two disqualifications: lost in the Eugene World Championships, lost in the European Championship in Munich.
And to the divan
The problem was in his technique, "the military march" that his coach, Jacinto Garzón, talks about so much: an accused arm movement, all strength, little subtlety in the movement of Pérez, who marched in the old fashioned way, to the displeasure of the judges. They disqualified her.
to the couch
“I wasn't doing well at all,” Jacinto Garzón, the technician, the sponge man, told me: that's what I've been, a sponge. During Maria's crisis, frustrated as she was at the disqualifications last year, I received advice from all over the world. I have been receptive to all of them: colleagues, Carrillo (the coach of Álvaro Martín and Miguel Ángel López), Montse Pastor, Bragado, Luis Saladíe... We have spoken with judges of the international march, to see what we had to change. The advice of Josep Marín (legend of the Spanish march) marked a turning point. We have positioned María's torso forward, we have tried to make the footprint reach the ground earlier and we have gained amplitude in our stride. There is less rotation of the arms, Maria's was an old gait, of effort. And Paco Mulas, sprinter coach in Granada, put the chilli pepper. He recorded it on video and showed us the possible changes: the movement guidelines in athletics are very useful.
“I had to go back and I had to do it without blaming anyone, making a commitment to myself,” said María Pérez, with her gold around her neck, not the chocolate, “and I had a great time. I have spent the race enjoying myself, and from km 15, when I have decided to really attack, when I have heard how the Chinese panted and the rest stayed, I already understood that this was mine. And that at the time of the ax blow I felt a puncture in the left hamstring!
(The medical services are analyzing the injury: we will see if Pérez can compete in the 35 km next Thursday).
“Her technician had told us that, the day before, she was more nervous than ever,” she commented.
–Bufff, I needed melatonin to fall asleep. It had been a long time since I felt like this, like a junior. He had barely been able to sleep three hours. It will be Álvaro Martín's fault: his gold on Saturday had put a lot of pressure on me...
