Spanish athletics collects medals on the asphalt and on the lavender track of the stadium it explodes bombs that illuminate and leave you open-mouthed, like Moha Attaoui, who 250 metres from the end of the 800m series changes pace as only he knows how, dynamite, and goes so alone that when he comes out of the last curve and heads into the straight, he turns around a couple of times, and even seems to get scared, although his sunglasses prevent us from seeing his gaze, because no one is following him closely. He wins with 1m 44.81s, with a second 400m one second faster than the first (52.9s + 51.9s; 25.6s the last 200m). Almost a month after his fabulous 1m 42.4s in Monaco, the 22-year-old athlete from Torrelavega is still on fire.
Great things are expected of Attaoui in Paris (Friday, semi-finals: Adrián Ben and Elvin Josué Canales will contest the repechage on Thursday; Saturday, final) as are also expected of Quique Llopis, who has come to Paris from Gandía, where he trains. Llopis is a giant of the hurdles (1.86m, 77 kilos) who at 23 years old is ready to take the big leap. “No, not a big leap, just to go up one more step in a continuous and regular progression,” says his coach, since he was a youth, Toni Puig, the same one who loudly proclaims: “Quique Llopis has arrived.”
Three years after the emergence of Asier Martínez, another Spaniard from the same year, 2000, reached the Olympic final (Thursday, 21.45) of a race created for the chosen ones. “My teacher told me that the 110m hurdles is the most complicated event,” laughs Puig, like someone who enjoys playing with danger. “You have to get off to a good start, then overcome 10 obstacles.” [las vallas miden 1,07m] at full speed and get there even faster.”
Llopis gives a practical demonstration in the semi-finals. Lane 5. To his right, Grant Holloway, the current monster in the specialty (best time, 12.81s, one hundredth of a second off the world record), to the left, the Japanese Rachid Muratake (13.04s), who is disconcerting because he is very short and has a supersonic start, his best weapon. “And that is why it seems that Llopis starts slowly, but no. We have worked a lot on the start with Valentín Rokandio, the relay coach. The eight-man start could not be maintained because he is so big and so strong that he did not fit, and he had problems with the first hurdle. The step gave us problems for years, and with a lot of patience, and with his work, he has finally managed to adjust his start to seven steps before the first hurdle,” Puig explains before the race. “Whoever starts well has 40% of the race won, but where Llopis is really strong is from the third hurdle, in the thrown phase. He will let Holloway go, who is on another level, and he will overtake Muratake. He will finish second.”
Puig nails it. Everything goes as planned, although in the last few hurdles Llopis tenses up a bit. “I was very nervous and I was getting anxious, because I saw that Parchment [jamaicano, campeón olímpico en Tokio 2020] “I was there, and I wasn’t sure until the draws,” says Llopis, who finished second, in fact, with a time of 13.17s, the fourth best of the eight finalists. “After seeing the times, the final is going to be expensive, it’s going to be very expensive, so I don’t dare to say any numbers. I will fight for everything and that’s it.”
The progress of the Bellreguard athlete, parallel to that of the Navarrese Asier Martínez (eliminated in the semi-finals), suffered a pause in 2023, after the blow he received at the last hurdle of the 60m final of the European Indoor Championships in Istanbul. “It took him a while to get back into training. He spent months just cycling,” recalls Puig. “If what happened in Istanbul hadn’t happened, at the World Championships in Budapest, where he finished ninth, instead of 13.30s he would have been at 13.20-22s and his whole 2024 would have seemed more logical.”
His 2024: March, fourth in the 60m hurdles at the Glasgow Indoor World Championships; June, silver medal at the European Championships in Rome, with a personal best (13.16s, already in the restricted club of under 13.20s, the times in which medals are played). “Already at the indoor world championships, where I was fourth, I realised that the 60m is not the best event I have and that my competitive level was changing a lot, both physically and psychologically. I am much calmer,” said Llopis then, the tattoo of the Harry Potter phrase, the light in the darkness, always on his arm, and the medal of Rayo, his dog. “Now I have to assimilate everything.” In Rome, however, despite the silver medal, Llopis was not yet 100%. “We arrived just in time because we didn’t have enough time, but a few weeks later the real Llopis came out in the national championship in La Nucia, where he ran alone in 13.09s,” says Puig. 13.09s is already the gateway to excellence, the 47th best world record in history. “The key is speed between hurdles, improving cyclic frequency. One second between hurdle and hurdle. That’s what we work on the most, where there is always room for improvement. Quique already has muscular maturity and is very good over the hurdle, and he attacks it from further away, with a better parabola, avoiding excessively vertical flight.”
They are hurdles, everyone says, no one can guarantee or promise anything, but after Orlando Ortega’s silver medal in Rio 2016, there has always been a Spaniard in an Olympic final. After Asier Martínez, it is Llopis’ turn.
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