The starting gun is fired and Quique Llopis (22), the favorite of the 60 hurdles, goes wrong and on the wrong foot.
Overwhelmed, he accelerates, tries to make up for lost time but is behind, and stumbles at the third hurdle, unbalances at the fourth and dismounts at the fifth.
The fall is spectacular, tall as he is.
And for a few seconds, the chronicler thinks:
-You missed a success.
And then he passes to another state, that of genuine concern, because Llopis has remained on his back and does not move, he seems unconscious and the judge who arrives first requests the attention of the doctors, and the stretcher-bearers enter with the stretcher and tie him up. and they take him to the hospital.
He will spend the night under observation.
Doctor Juan Manuel Alonso, close to the Spanish Federation, communicates that Llopis suffers a thoracic and cranial trauma and a concussion.
“The first radiological tests show no neurological or bone injury. He will remain under observation overnight as a precaution,” the doctor tweeted.
-It seems that Llopis is fine. He has suffered a concussion but has quickly regained consciousness and complains of muscle pain, this is normal and shows that he is fine. The important thing is that he doesn’t have any serious injuries,” says José Peiró, the Spanish coach, later.
Peiró takes the opportunity to say more things.
He says that he is not entirely satisfied with the balance of the Spaniards.
-I liked the attitude, but not the results.
Spain leaves Istanbul with two podiums, the gold for Adrián Ben and the silver for Adel Mechaal, and has also fired another five shots at the post: Esther Guerrero and Jesús Gómez (both in 1,500), Lorea Ibarzábal (800), Óscar Husillos (400) and the relay.
-I think that our athleticism was for more, although I celebrate the good attitude of the team, as in the case of Quique Llopis himself, who has fought to the last fence, or Lorea Ibarzábal, who has improved herself and has stayed behind. two hundredths of the bronze. Or like the relievers: two young guys have shown that they can be counted on.
The relief deserves a point and aside.
At the last post of the 4×400, David García, a 17-year-old teenager whose back had been projected by a maroon, got stuck: he had received the baton in the lead, ahead of the Belgians, French and Dutch, but had not withstood the onslaught of the bulls and, blocked, he closed the last hundred in 13.30 and fell off the podium.
Chocolate medal for the relay of Husillos, Markel Fernández, Lucas Búa and García (3m06s87, three tenths off the podium: Belgium wins, and then France and the Netherlands), a disappointment for the powerful team that had appeared in Istanbul aspiring to everything and that, as the days passed, he had had to reset after suffering injuries to Iñaki Cañal and Manuel Guijarro.
But we have made the grade. And for those who thought that we would not be there, that we would not fight because we had a 17-year-old boy and another 20-year-old (Markel Fernández), well, we have shown that they were wrong, says Husillos.
Husillos occupies the role of natural leader of the team, since he has three European podiums and is the best Spanish four-hundred-year-old of the present. And as a closing, he says:
-This is the embryo of a team prepared to be European champion in the future.