Fists that kill stereotypes, that open doors

Laura Fuertes points to her nose and runs a finger along its smooth surface. She looks into the journalist’s eyes and asks, “Can you tell that it was broken by a punch? Do I have a deviated septum?”

—And if it were noticeable, would you mind?

“Not at all. I broke my nose in the first bout of the European Games. I won it with a broken nose. And I also won the next one, which is the one that qualified me for the Olympic Games. And I ended up winning, always with a broken nose, the bronze medal at the Europeans. So I’m not worried at all. You can break it in any normal accident.”

Laura Fuertes, a 23-year-old Asturian from Gijón, weighs exactly 50 kilos, not one gram more or one less. With her fists she breaks stereotypes and opens doors. She is the first Spanish boxer to qualify for the Games. She was also the first Spanish medalist, bronze, at a World Championships in 2023. “I started swimming, but I always liked it, the truth is, I always liked boxing, but, well, I spent a season doing karate and boxing at the same time, and since what I liked about karate was combat, kumite, so where is there always combat? Well, in boxing,” she says. “I liked the sport because boxing is a super-complete sport, I think you release a lot of adrenaline, you work on a lot of things, so, well, I decided on it.”

The boxer’s nose is, more than a cliché, a literary resource that becomes a weapon of aggression. “On the networks there are very sexist comments, which devalue the sacrifice that women make, which is the same as that of our colleagues. In person, they have only told me that being very pretty, how do I dedicate myself to this, that they are going to destroy my nose, but well, I always turn a deaf ear… Both on social networks and in person I am very kind when commenting on it, I always invite those people who say that to come to a gym or to a boxing evening to see it and realize that their comments are wrong,” says Fuertes, who lives and works in the Blume residence and in the High Performance Center of Madrid, and takes boxing out of its low-class legend of underworld and mafias. “Boxing is totally different from what you might think when watching Rocky or reading so many crime novels. It is totally different. Thank God this is changing. My colleagues, both men and women, are changing it. We are showing that it is a sport that requires a lot of sacrifice. You have to eat well, you have to train a lot, because a fight, three rounds of two minutes each, is very demanding, both physically and mentally. That image of boxing is changing. And I am very, very happy.”

There are eternal boxing images that the Asturian boxer does not give up. She cannot do so. They are the essence of the ring. One is the image of the boxers outlined on the posters that announce the fights, on guard, one fist forward, one leg back, crouched, ready to hit. That is how she wants to pose, historically, traditionally, in one of the rings of the gymnasium installed in the basement of the High Council of Sports. In the corner, a stool and a giant funnel connected by a tube to a bucket on the floor, to spit saliva and bad thoughts. “At school they didn’t punish me much, to be honest. They hardly sent me to the corner to think…”, she says. “And now I go a lot. In the corner what helps you is listening to your coach, having them tell you the things you have to do to improve, having them tell you how you are doing, having them tell you what you are doing well.”

In the gym, there are dry-hanging, punching balls, some jump ropes and t-shirts drying on the 12 ropes. It is next to the Casa de Campo, but he does not imitate Tony Leblanc, the now outdated topic of the famous boxer in Spain in the 70s, who repeats “from the gym to the Casa de Campo, from the Casa de Campo to the gym”… “I had never heard of it before… No, I am not going to do a push-up at the Casa de Campo, and in the gym I like to do sparring with sparring partners and, above all, individual work with the mitt. I have my trainer, Rafa Lozano, Balita, only paying attention to me, correcting me, and I notice how the punch goes in hard. I notice my strength, my power. I like that a lot.”

She is not the Hilary Swank of Million Dollar Baby, nor Balita, a former Olympic boxer from Cordoba, she is the sentimental Clint Eastwood who is transformed by her, but Fuertes does not reject the image. “It is a film that talks about how a girl gets into a man’s world, how it is difficult for her to find a trainer, how it is difficult for her to find rivals as well. I like that film very much. It reflects very well the difficulties that we women have…”, says the Gijón native, more of a fine stylist than a puncher —”at 50 kilos there are no knockouts, we don’t have enough strength… Those of 80, if they hit hard, and how heavy their hand is,” she explains, “I, as I am quite tall for my weight, I am 1.63m tall, I keep my distance well, without getting into hand-to-hand combat”—, an admirer of Mireia Belmonte and fascinated by Muhammad Ali, Olympic champion in Rome 60 and boxer who broke the boundaries of boxing and permeated society. “He floats like a butterfly and stings like a wasp… he is a boxer who is inimitable.”

Laura Fuertes’ journey along the Seine begins on Sunday 28 July, at the Arena Norte, with the first of six fights leading to a final, around midnight on Friday 9 August, and there will still be tears of San Lorenzo, in a place with an extraordinary meaning for Spanish sporting mythology, as the ring will be set up on the red clay of the Philippe Chatrier court, at Roland Garros. “I would love to be an Olympic champion, obviously. I am training for it,” she says. “Boxing would have more visibility, but I am trying from here, from the achievements I have achieved, both the world medal and being the first to qualify, I am fighting to give a voice to this sport, to give a voice to women in this sport, which many people still think is masculine. To give a voice, perhaps, and to give visibility to girls who want to start and can have a role model with whom they can identify.”

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