Surprising worlds open up to Spanish specialists, who appear on the podiums in those disciplines in which they have never done so.
The silver of María de Valdés in the 10km in open water on Saturday was joined this Sunday by the bronze of Nicolás García Boissier (28) and Adrián Abadía (21) in the 3-meter synchronized jump, two events that have It caught the specialists off balance and amazed the technicians, athletes and federation officials. Seven months before the Paris 2024 Games, the miscellany of possibilities enters another dimension: in the aquatic world, there is life beyond water polo and synchronized swimming.
Never, in the previous twenty editions, had a Spanish jumper been on the world podium, even though Nicolás García Boissier, already a veteran in the discipline (these are his fourth World Cups), had been fifth last summer, in Fukuoka, also alongside to Abbey.
The figure of Adrián Abadía, a prodigy in the lower categories (junior European gold in 2017, 2018 and 2019), has had to grow to raise the level of Spanish jumping, now established in the elite, since this Sunday’s bronze It also guarantees them a place in Paris.
While the final was being played, the Spaniards have always appeared in the foreground, García Boissier more elongated, Abadía more compact and forceful. Two silhouettes that contrast as much as they complement each other: at the moment of pressing the lever, both generate prodigious symmetries.
They have always been close to the Chinese (Zongyuan Wang and Daoyi Long, gold at the end), the Italians (Lorenzo Marsaglia and Giovanni Tocci, silver) and the Mexicans, fourth, and ahead of the Americans, and never pressured by the weight of the moment, because They had never been there, so close to a world podium.
And it was in the last round, with a difficulty of 3.4 (they needed various scores of 7.5 to unseat the Mexicans), when the Spanish couple made a millimetric jump to go up to 78.54, with a range of eights and eights and a half, to project up to 383.28, eight thousandths ahead of the Mexicans Rodrigo Diego and Osmar Olvera, chocolate medalist.
The milestone will keep them upset in the coming nights, who knows if they will rethink the future in the short term, since Nicolás García Boissier, perhaps discouraged by the limited economic possibilities that the discipline offers, insists on social networks that his future is very much beyond sports: “My professional aspirations focus on the world of financial advice and wealth management,” he writes on his LinkedIn profile. “I really want to delve into this world and learn as much as possible, with the aim of being able to dedicate myself professionally in the future to the management of financial assets”.