“Everyone says that you learn by losing, but I prefer to learn by winning,” said Adriana Cerezo, a tear on her face who hugged the shoulders of every person she met in the corridors of the elegant Grand Palais. The 20-year-old was inconsolable. “This didn’t enter my head, it didn’t enter my head,” repeated the -49kg taekwondo athlete, number two in the world, who had proclaimed on every corner that only Olympic gold was good enough for her. Pure youthful ardor. But her defeat in the quarterfinals against the Iranian Mobina Nematzadeh was incontestable. And inexplicable for her. The sad face of a day of sorrows for Spanish taekwondo because Adrián Vicente (-58) also left empty-handed after reaching the last fight for bronze.
Cerezo had appeared radiant in the arena next to the Champs Elysees. Tall, long, slender, a hot pepper that wanted to bite. The majestic hall, with its large glass roof, looked like a stadium because of the Spanish fans who had gathered inside. The young woman wore a pink ribbon in her hair, a broad smile and she launched herself with four powerful jumps. Here I am, no one can stop me, silver in Tokyo now after the gold in Paris. Or so she thought. A quarter of an hour later, the wonder girl left dragging her body without knowing what had happened, chewing on each step. Her rival’s right leg had broken her in two. And an hour later, she lost everything because she didn’t get into the repechage for bronze either. Not even the consolation.
“We have taken a few steps back and hopefully it will be to gain momentum. I trust that things will happen for a reason. We will go for the next one in the same way as if this had gone well,” said this determined and smooth-talking girl, whose only goal two hours after seeing herself with nothing was to stop crying.
After the silver in Tokyo and the gold slipping away in Japan in the final seconds, he thought of everything for Paris. For example, he would watch documentaries about great athletes. He has watched the Michael Jordan one four times in full. He has also watched the ones about Kobe Bryan, Alexia Putellas and Carolina Martín, the great drama of Paris. His coach, Jesús Ramal, had explained to him that he should also be careful about what he put into his head, because what he sees is what makes him grow. And he listened to him.
On Wednesday, shortly after it was confirmed that Paris was over for her, that the repechage would not be there either, her coach was quick to ask her in the locker room what she had in mind for Los Angeles 2028. “Ha,” she replied. “I have plenty of that,” he replied, according to what they both said. Ramal had made her see that in Paris she had to aspire to the highest mountain and convinced her of that. But he was also aware that, if everything went wrong, the route for the next four years would have to be recalculated. Just what is needed now. The gold went to the Thai Panipak Wongpattanakit, who beat her in Tokyo.
While Cerezo was drowning his sorrows, Adrian Vicente put on his flip-flops and went for a walk down the Champs Elysees with his coach Miguel Angel Herranz. It was mid-afternoon and he had made it to the repechage after losing in the quarter-finals. He had three hours until the next fight. So he still had one bullet left. A little while earlier, he had hugged Azerbaijani Gashim Magomedov, who had just beaten him. He clung to him in the corridors, encouraged him and smiled together. He needed it. “Now all of Spain is behind him and we are going for it. I trust him, he is a good friend,” said this 25-year-old taekwondo fighter with a childlike face, beardless and quick-talking. If Magomedov qualified for the final, he could fight for bronze. That is what happened. But that third option did not work either. In the final fight, the world number one, the Tunisian Mohamed Khalil Jendoubi, unceremoniously knocked him out.
Also number two in the ranking, like Cerezo, he was another clear medal option. His taekwondo is similar to his language: a lot of freshness and rhythm. His coach sometimes has to calm him down because, he says, he is very ambitious and aggressive with his rivals, and that style carries risks. He had not competed much in 2024. He underwent a meniscus cleaning, recovered well, won a European bronze without much training and took refuge in barracks awaiting the Games. This Wednesday, he fulfilled all the rituals: he always places the bottle to the right of his coach’s chair. He says that his coach has given him that OCD. It was of no use.
“I spoke to my coach,” he explained about the preparation for the last fight with Jendoubi, “that we were not going to lose 1-0 or 2-0. ‘We are going to give it our all, even if it means losing by a margin.’ We had to try some chance of a knockout, something unexpected,” he added about the end of a very long day, with many breaks, in which there is “a lot of downtime to think.”
He saw it close, but at the last station everything seemed far away. Cerezo, meanwhile, felt in the last months that Olympic glory was possible and left without consolation.
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