Daniel Pintado is an electron, and what legs, what hips, pure energy to which Álvaro Martín, head, head, and what a heart, how much he suffers, how he resists, how he accelerates in the last meters to give María Pérez a pat on the back and, like the Inca couriers who invented the post office, or the horses of the pony express In the novels, to fall exhausted. Thanks to Pintado, the unrivalled hare, Italy –Stano, the Lucan with the twisted-tip moustache, and Palmisano, the Olympic champions of Tokyo– are chasing far away, at 47s. Even further away is Australia.
Energy is neither created nor destroyed, it is transmitted, and Pintado’s energy, an Ecuadorian powerhouse, Olympic champion in the 20s, passes, as if by magic, not to the companion whose hand he barely touches, Glenda Morejón, who fades away and slows down under the threat of the two warnings they carry, but to a short Spanish woman from Granada, with an enormous white cap on a wise and determined head, María Pérez, from Orce, who, as if shot by a cannon, a missile, accelerates towards the gold, which awaits her, past the Eiffel Tower, crossing the Seine on the Jena bridge in the Trocadéro gardens, the best view of Paris from there. Nobody slows her down, nothing can stop her, nobody prevents her last kilometre, a triumphal walk, an imperial march. And she can even shake hands with all the spectators behind the barriers. She does not take the flag that is offered to her. He wants to arrive empty-handed to attack the tape with rage and strength, and joy, as if he wanted to break it with a karate chop. And he screams. A howl. The end of all his troubles.
Then he discreetly bends down and vomits.
The price of supreme effort. Then, the photo, the flag, the hug with Álvaro Martín, a fellow relay rider, who cracks it; the hug with his trainers, Jacinto Garzón, from Guadix, Granada, and José Antonio Carrillo, from Cieza, Murcia, which makes all four of them cry.
There is no better place for the great display of the golden march, of the golden boys, Álvaro Martín, 30 years old, from Llerena, Badajoz, and María Pérez, 28, the first Spanish athletes to achieve the maximum, the triple crown, European champions, world champions, Olympic champions. And four days ago, together with Sena himself, bronze and silver, respectively, in the 20 kilometers. Their photo, one in the arms of the other, Spanish flags everywhere, is already the great classic of Spanish sport. The image was born in the Heroes’ Square in Budapest last summer, twice world champions (20 and 35 kilometers); it is repeated in Paris, where it shines most. It is the first gold for Spanish athletics since Ruth Beitia’s victory in the high jump in Rio 2016.
“We have made history,” says María Pérez. “This is already a marriage.” And Álvaro Martín, double major in Politics and Law, with a TFG on the peasant struggle in his beloved Extremadura, when asked the typical question, what do you feel?, answers explosively. “What the hell am I going to feel? The happiness of being devastated, tired, happy…”, he says. “We have experienced many things together, our first European Championship together, our first World Championship together and now our first Olympic gold together. We do well together, don’t we?”
The final challenge was shared, they divided it up, 42.195 kilometres, a marathon walked very fast –at 3m 50s per kilometre for the men, at 4m 12s for María–, in 2h 50m 31s. Morejón closed the silver for Ecuador, the Jefferson Pérez walking school in Cuenca, pure Andes, 51s behind the Spaniards, and third, the Australians Rhydian Cowley and Jemima Montag, 1m 7s behind. The second Spanish couple, Cristina Montesinos and Miguel Ángel López, was ninth, 5m 39s behind.
“I am happy for them,” says López, his voice too calm. “These are the first Olympic medals for Spanish race walking after 20 years, I think.” [Paquillo Fernández, plata en Atenas tras Jefferson Pérez]. They have achieved what others could not.”
López, who is also technically very neat, is surprised by the speed and freedom with which he sets off on the first post, drizzling, 16 degrees at 7.30, the loss of the proverbial prudence and patience of someone on foot. It is forbidden not to take risks. They run, they run. Dunfee runs, crazy Canadian, and Japanese Kawano, on the run. “It is the show that those who have invented the relay are looking for,” says Paul McGrath, reserve in the band. “This is sport businessa circus, the shorter the performance, the better, a flash, the 10s of the 100m, like that, and we, the march, are the elephants.”
Elephants open paths. Nothing stops elephants. López suffers, but the wise men Álvaro Martín and Daniel Pintado keep calm in the middle of the hurricane. They control it. At the end of the relay (11.4 kilometres), the Ecuadorian accelerates. A slap on the hand launches Morejón, María Pérez. The race begins to be defined, which becomes clearer at the end of the first relay of the marchers, when the woman from Orce begins to drop slightly. The alarm. “María arrived dead at the transition, dead” explains Garzón, her trainer. “We had nothing, 35 minutes, to recover her. She vomited a couple of times, but it wasn’t stomach problems, it was phlegm, remains of the cough from the viral process she went through recently. The physiotherapists, the doctors acted, we took off her vest from the cold and warmed her with towels. She changed her shoes too, with the rain her foot danced on the carbon plate and she was at risk of twisting her ankle, but she always kept her head strong.” María Pérez, reborn, receives the last pat on the back from Álvaro Martín. She has already done the emptying, half with Pintado. “I have done the dirty work for her,” says Martín. “María, let’s say, had it easier because I am the bad guy on the team, she has much more quality than me and, what’s more, in the last kilometres I kept telling María, that’s enough, there’s no need to push any harder, enjoy it, but she wanted to keep enjoying herself in her own way, she’s that competitive.”
All that was left was to finish. To release the rage in a scream and a blow. It is her privilege. She has earned the right to look back on the past not as a series of misfortunes – the tears at the World Championships in Doha 19 at midnight, consumed by the heat and humidity, the fourth place in Tokyo, the disqualification for poor technique from the World Championships in 2022, the change of technique, the victory in Budapest punished by a broken sacrum last November, the illness of her partner, Noelia, now recovered… – but as the route that gives greater value to success.
“This success was born with the three fourth places of Tokio, María, Tur, Álvaro,” says Garzón. “That was not a failure, but the beginning.”
Carrillo, the master from Cieza, goes back further, calm despite everything, no longer burdened by the already broken hat. “Today I didn’t cry,” he says. “I’ve always said it in the coaching courses I give, the first Olympic medal in Spanish athletics was in walking, Jordi Llopart in Moscow 80; also the first gold medal is in walking, Dani Plaza in Barcelona 92. The first medal for a woman? María Vasco, in the 20 kilometers in Sydney. Damn, we’ve been opening the doors to medals. A tradition has been created within our discipline. I’ve been in this for 42, 43 years and I’m proud that all those who come talk about those who came before. Plaza started by watching Marín and Llopart, Juanma Molina by watching Plaza, Miguel Ángel, when he saw Juanma win a medal in Helsinki, and Paul told me the other day that he was hooked by Miguel Ángel with his silver in Moscow… We already have an ancestral tradition that is incredible.”
The drizzle that refreshed the race is now scorched by the sun at almost midday, when the Spanish march celebrates the great day of the culmination of its journey.
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