When he was concentrated in Font Romeu in July, Paul McGrath, long elastic arms, green eyes, a class walker and cycling enthusiast, went to see the Tour pass by on the day of the Plateau de Beille, and, after finishing the 20 kilometres in pain, the 17th, he whistled and said in admiration, if only he had Pogacar’s gearbox! He didn’t have it, he ran out of petrol at kilometre 16 because his gastric system couldn’t assimilate the carbohydrates he was ingesting, nor did Álvaro Martín, who missed the ability to repeat the explosive blow that made him world champion in Budapest a year ago, but finished third, and happy, and his coach, José Antonio Carrillo, straw hat half unstitched, ready to receive the liberating punch, prays, from the refreshment table as he passed on the last lap. “Don’t finish fourth, don’t finish fourth,” he prays to fate, which has given him European and world champions, and medallists of all kinds, but never gave him an Olympic medallist. Martín, the brilliant Extremaduran, resists, and only regrets not having had time to feel sure of bronze and to have enjoyed the moment and the flag more because he thought that the Olympic champion from Tokyo was closely chasing him. But this one, Massimo Stano, an Italian from Lucania, pure hard south like the lands of Granada, Massimo Stano, had been betrayed by his left shoe, he danced around the carbon square and stumbled, forcing his ankle. He was out of the fight.
In the race walk, rivals huddled together in a ball that sometimes rounds and finally deflates and becomes flabby, disappears, 60, 70 aerial strides. They don’t look at each other, but they see each other, they know each other. They sense each other in the war of attrition. They anxiously anticipate the atomic change of their rival and, already without strength, they see him moving away and feel, as McGrath says, that he is digging his own grave chasing in the void. The lethal acceleration, so difficult to achieve in the race walk, was achieved by two athletes on the morning that dawned not with sun but with lightning and thunder, and a downpour, on the banks of the Seine, between the Trocadéro and the Eiffel Tower by the Jena bridge, one elbow and one turn, 20 times. One was gold, the Ecuadorian Daniel Pintado, from Cuenca like the myth Jefferson Perez, who left Martin and the accelerated Brazilian Caio Bonfim nailed to the ground in a galactic last kilometer of 3m 31s. And the winner, above all, was the Granadan from Orce, María Perez, a giant of the race walk, double world champion in Budapest, who repeated the change of pace in Paris, destroying those who accompanied her, the best -Kimberly Garcia, Peruvian and world champion, was left behind; Antonella Palmisano, Italian and Olympic champion, retired- and, as if she heard the trumpet of the Seventh Cavalry and its banners inside her, she launched herself into the charge, controlled frenzy, teeth clenched, light legs, determined and extremely fast, touching 4m 10s per kilometer, in pursuit of the Chinese Jiayu Yang, who had escaped early and between her and the others, a world.
The Chinese athlete, world champion in 2017 and world record holder for the distance, had a lead of 44 seconds when Pérez took off, with her gait more elastic, more technically perfected thanks to the work of biomechanics and specialists and, above all, of her coach in Guadix, Jacinto Garzón, who supported her and gave her confidence and encouragement just three months ago, when a process of multiple viruses weakened her with coughs that suffocated her. “If someone had told me three months ago that I would be on the Olympic podium today, I would have told them they were crazy,” says Garzón, and Palmisano, who is as close a friend of the Granada champion as the bronze medallist, the Australian Jemima Montag, who arrives a few seconds behind, stops to congratulate him next to him. Seeing that María Pérez, on the verge of fainting, is so dizzy that she has to lean on the supports of the finish line banner, he approaches her and offers her his shoulder to lean on and slowly, slowly, she advances. Also approaching Garzón, a magnet for good people, is Caio Bonfim, the Brazilian silver medallist ahead of Álvaro Martín. And he speaks of María Pérez as if he were a goddess. “What a head, what a head, it was a medal won with the head, and what strength,” he delights in describing. “And the legs, a beauty, what a gait.”
Head, strength (heart) and legs, what legs, Maria Perez, on the attack, comeback spirit, she takes on the whole of Trocadéro and pursues. And her faith is contagious. The disadvantage is reduced. 38s at kilometre 14, 30s at 15, 20s at 16. An unstoppable progression. 23 degrees at 8:00, 30 at 12:00, and always damp after the storm.
“In the 10th she passed with her best time ever, and I told myself that to catch up with the Chinese girl, to survive the humidity of the Seine, passing over the bridge, I would have to be 100% Maria,” says Garzón, medals and images of the Virgin Mary hanging from his neck and in his pockets. “And she wasn’t 100% Maria, she was 120%. She had the race of her life.”
At kilometre 19, the Chinese woman’s lead had stabilised and was not decreasing, and common sense defeated stupid courage. Pérez preferred to secure the silver rather than risk everything for a distant gold. “I always say that women are more suicidal than men,” says Pérez. “In the end, the Australian was catching up to me and I had to bet on gold or silver and I preferred to keep the silver, to secure it. Bronze is good, but silver is worth much more.”
The first of the 18 Olympic medals in Spanish athletics was Jordi Llopart’s silver in the 20-kilometre event in Moscow. Then came Dani Plaza, Valentí Massana, María Vasco and Paquillo Fernández. María Pérez and Álvaro Marín have two more: seven in race walking, 11 for all the others.
The two medallists from Paris, four times world champions in Budapest, European champions too, show the world how difficult it is to win an Olympic medal, a competition that takes place every four years and that shapes their dreams and completes their list of achievements. And it allows the man from Extremadura to say that these are his last Games in Paris, that he is already 30 years old and that the young people who arrive (McGrath, 22) walk a lot. “I think that the bronze is the most I could get. You have to be honest. I think that Ecuador today was, not one step, but two steps ahead, and I had to suffer until I couldn’t because I was afraid of finishing fourth, like in Tokyo,” says the walker who at 15 left Llerena for the CAR in Madrid and at 25 left Madrid for Cieza, peaches instead of the olive trees of his Extremadura, but hard land too. “The first thought that came to me in Tokyo was if that wasn’t the only train to get the medal, and it has gone and it is not coming back.”
He hugs and cries with emotion with Carrillo, who tells him that the bronze is worth it, that you don’t have to be selfish and want everything. And that he is already a happy man. 43 years ago, as a young coach, he asked himself, why couldn’t I have an athlete in the Olympic Games? In 1996 he achieved it with Fernando Vázquez, the first Olympian from Cieza. In 2024 he already has the medal and can tell Mussabini’s happy little hat to go to hell.
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