"There is no name to play a World Cup at home...", says enthusiastically Gigi Oliva (31), daughter of Matadepera and one of the families of all life in hockey. Her father, Jordi Oliva, was an Olympian in Los Angeles and Seoul Her brother, Roc, a legend, was silver in Beijing 2008. She started on the stick at the age of five at Atlètic Terrassa, and very close to Can Salas, at the Olímpic, at the end of the World Cup that starts today , will say goodbye to the Spanish team after more than half a lifetime of dedication, since the age of 15. He hopes to do so, yes, on the last day of the tournament, Sunday July 17, a sign that he reaches the final phase.
“And hopefully it will be with a medal, I won't mind turning years anymore –because they already weigh me down a bit– if they give me this gift...”, laughs Oliva, who could enter the 32 at the end of the final match, since playing at 9:30 p.m. (to quell the heat) the match could be extended until the next day.
In any case, it will be the last of the reference of a generation. “I will not play with the national team anymore, I have already told my teammates; with the Junior I will continue for at least one more year”, tells La Vanguardia the small player from Egar, 156 cm of explosiveness and speed, one of the souls of the redsticks, of which she has been the captain since 2015, and the player with the most internationalities: 261.
For Oliva, playing a World Cup at home is a unique opportunity to continue climbing in the world elite. “Competing at home is more of a motivation than a pressure, but the fact of having won medals in the previous World Cups and Europeans puts more pressure on us: people expect us to get a medal. But above all, we want to win it, we have expectations of winning. Although in the 60 minutes we have to put our best version on the pitch”.
Like all her classmates, Oliva suffers from the inconveniences of a semi-professional discipline that does not allow her to dedicate herself exclusively to hockey. She has a degree in Aeronautical Engineering and a master's degree in Big Data (data analysis), to which she is dedicated professionally. Although not for that reason she dares to predict what rivals they will have in the fight for the medals.
"I don't know how to say... In the last World Cup and in the Games it was the opposite of what was expected, in the quarterfinals the forecast changes, as happened to us in London (2018, bronze): we beat Germany and nobody gave a hard for us, the polls did not give us even a 15% chance. In the end we found the lowest rankings, like Ireland and us, in a semi-final that no one expected”. Although, he continues, "the one who will surely be for the medals will be the Netherlands, which has not failed in almost any final." The data does not fail him: the oranje have six World Cup finals in a row, since 1998, and eight golds in 12 finals of the 14 editions. The data that Oliva lacks is the first Spanish final.
