Quarter-finals of the European Football Championship. 2008. I’m watching it with some friends and our children. The match and extra time end in a draw. There are penalties. Italy is in front. Almost nothing. I get up and say something that is surely in the heads of all the older people. We will lose for sure. The younger ones look at us. Why is this pessimism? Why are we not going to beat them? 2024. The great Mariano Haro dies. With these two moments, apparently unrelated, one of the keys to the evolution of Spanish sport can be explained. Let’s start with Mariano.
Nicknamed the “Lazarillo de Tormes of Spanish athletics”, as Carlos Arribas explains in his excellent article, Haro represents like no other the social and sporting moment of a country that was then already in its fourth decade of dictatorship. Without structures or resources that could significantly help the planning and development of sports, Haro, like Bahamontes or Paquito Fernández Ochoa, emerged spontaneously and had to find a way to train and compete in minimal conditions. These disadvantages were compensated for with innate intelligence, a capacity for suffering and a dose of roguery. All very Spanish at that time.
When the competition arrived, the image that has remained engraved is seeing him running surrounded by Nordic competitors who were taller, stronger and had longer strides. There were also African athletes, with all that this implies when we are talking about covering long distances. Mariano fought, Mariano always seemed like he could win, but Mariano never came first. He also had a chance of an Olympic medal in Munich 72, until the last stretch it seemed that he was going to get it, but history repeated itself, finishing in the worst possible Olympic position, fourth.
Why did we, the older ones, think that we were going to be eliminated on penalties? Well, because our sporting education was influenced more by failures than by successes, more by inferiority complexes than by competitive confidence, more by objectives that we believed were beyond our reach than by stimulating goals. We grew up watching people lose, not reaching the finals, and winning medals in dribs and drabs. The 60s and 70s were a sporting wasteland, which faithfully corresponded to what Spain was like in those times of Nodo and black and white.
The 80s arrived, democracy and the dawning of a new era with the appearance of some individual and collective examples that took away a lot of our dandruff. Perico, Seve, Fernando Martín and the basketball team gradually broke moulds and barriers, until the Barcelona 92 Games, the first where public and private institutions gave the necessary impetus so that our athletes could find the necessary habitat to train and compete. The result was spectacular.
What we have seen and enjoyed for more than two decades has been played by the heirs of those successful people of the 90s. Young men and women who, in their process of formation and maturation, did not have to face any limitations when dreaming of goals that previously seemed unattainable. From the impossible, we moved on to “why not?” Hence the confusion of our children. Before their clear, optimistic and possibilist gaze, there we were, the old-fashioned ones, those of us who had as a hero the great and small Mariano Haro at the same time.
Speaking of people who don’t believe in the impossible (probably inspired by examples like the unbreakable Amaya Valdemoro) I take my hat off once again to the women’s basketball team. This Sunday’s game against China was another demonstration of faith, character, confidence and emotional control. Scariolo said yesterday that it’s hard for them to compete against so much physical NBA play. The Spanish women’s team had to deal with a glaring disadvantage, especially under the rim, and they managed to survive. They had lost everything and yet they kept on fighting until they achieved a victory of those that are described as miraculous and that have little to do with miracles and a lot to do with talent and competitive ability.
Finally, Nadal, who grew up watching Corretja, Ferrero and Moyá win Grand Slam and Davis Cup tournaments, has accepted the date with Nole Djokovic. I’ve marked it in red on my calendar. I know there aren’t many reasons for optimism, but why not?
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