At this point, three days before all this party ends, I begin to notice the white rabbit syndrome, that of Alice in Wonderland. I already discussed this in the Tokyo diary, and it consists of going from one place to another, without stopping more than necessary in any place and with the ever-present stress of not getting to everything you would like. There is no remedy, because with the quantity and speed at which events develop, each choice means ten renunciations. The ones I find most difficult to discard are the Kindergarten matterswhich come with a little battle inside.
Let’s start with something light that has been in my outbox for several days. The decision of the football team to go to a hotel (they were not the only ones) because they do not rest well in the Village seems to me to be the right one and any criticism of football elitism is unnecessary. I understand them perfectly and I wish 40 years ago they had done it for us. Maybe our defeat against Jordan and company would not have occurred with a better sleep than we had the two or three nights before the final. Or maybe not. We will never know (wink, wink). This has happened before and will always happen, unless the Games are held in the sad Moscow of 1980, the most boring in history.
As the days go by, the percentage of athletes competing decreases and the percentage of those partying grows exponentially. The result obtained does not matter. If you have been successful, party to celebrate. If you have not achieved your goals, party to recover your spirits. If you have failed completely, party to forget. They say that there are even people who have sexual relations, a fact that I, at least, cannot confirm.
By the time you’re playing for a medal, which in team sports is usually on the last weekend, you’ve become a weirdo, a guy who walks and doesn’t run around shouting, who doesn’t go around taking one photo after another, who doesn’t sunbathe and disappears right after dinner to retire to his quarters.
I imagine the water polo girls won’t mind postponing their celebrations for a few more days. Their semi-final was a roller coaster that was decided on penalties. sumStress. That walk to the starting line trying to show serenity while in your mind a battle breaks out between the voice of confidence and that of fear. Now that they put microphones on athletes and referees to watch the sport from the inside, I would love to be able to put one on so I could hear the mental dialogues, those “I’m sure I’ll score” versus “you’re going to screw up”. It’s clear that seeing that Spain didn’t miss a single one, we know who won the battle this time.
Others are missing out, for example, in athletics, where, leaving aside the race walk, we have smiled just enough. There, in the mixed zone where the athletes go to talk to the media, there are revealing moments that range from the tender sincerity of the friendly and spontaneous Águeda Marqués (“They run a lot, I am amazed at the level there is”) to the heartbreaking of Belén Toimil, who declares that she is fed up with not giving the right level at the right time, passing through Adrián Ben (“You sacrifice life and sport gives you a slap in the face to knock you down”). Reactions for all tastes and colors that correspond to what we see and what is behind and we do not know. Dreams, expectations, efforts, renunciations, the future, everything enters into an emotional cocktail that is not usually easy to manage.
I end by congratulating Saúl Craviotto, who with his bronze in the K4 has become the most decorated athlete in the Olympics. A great guy in every sense. As the great Twitter user @pabloLolaso says, “six Olympic medals and between one and another the same thing wins you over.” MasterChefmakes an advertisement for underwear or gives you a €150 fine for drinking in a petrol station car park”.
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