Creativity is easy, the difficult thing is having the idea
Ferran Adrià
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Sara Saldaña (32) tells me:
–When I wasn’t in the pool training, I went to restaurants. And if I liked the place or the plating, I took a photo and showed it to my friends.
-AND…?
–One day, Marc (her partner) told me: ‘And why don’t you create an account on social networks and publish your experiences?’ And yes, I tried: I created @olympianfoodie.
(He did it three years ago: the Instagram account has 24,100 followers; on some networks, his publications have exceeded two million views).
-AND…?
–Suddenly, followers started asking me things. For example: ‘Since you are a professional artistic swimmer, do you have to do any regimen?’ Or: ‘Are there things you can’t eat?’ Or: ‘Do you eat a lot or a little?’ And I answered them: ‘I eat more than a normal person. Think that I train eight hours a day. If I don’t fill myself, I don’t give up.
And the last answer is a paradox.
Well, Sara Saldaña is really thin. As thin as any professional mermaid should be.
I can verify this because the afternoon is mild at the CAR in Sant Cugat, and the swimmer is wearing short tights and a tank top. We sat on the coaches’ bench, in the outdoor pool.
Today, Sara Saldaña has already trained.
The season has a crumb: the Paris Games loom on the horizon, and the new generation of sirens, the heirs of Anna Tarrés, Gemma Mengual, Andrea Fuentes and Ona Carbonell, have an outstanding debt with the Olympism, because Tokyo 2020 had gone so well .
The last championships are another thing. At the 2021 European Championship in Budapest, Sara Saldaña collected two podiums. And in the last World Cup, Fukuoka 2023, a gold (in total, in Japan, Mayuko Fujiki’s specialists won seven medals, three of them gold).
I digress (or not).
(…)
Sara Saldaña brings me back to the present:
–Immediately, my videos began to go viral on reels. It seems that he had got the idea right. I am studying Digital Design (I have two courses left at UNIR, the distance university of La Rioja), so I started editing them. And more things happened. Products and restaurants contacted me. They wanted me to give them publicity, obviously without paying me. They started inviting me to eat. I made more videos and they went more viral, so more proposals came.
–Was everything worth it?
–Nooooo! I only advertise those restaurants that I like and consider recommended. If not, it seems disrespectful to everyone. And if I don’t like a restaurant, I tell the person in charge. I’m telling you this politely, but I’m telling you. What I want is to recommend people to eat well.
–Do you have favorites?
–I have an agreement with El Cacereño, one of my favorites along with Algo Salvaje, although they are very different. The ham and cheeses at El Cacereño are wonderful. If I feel like going for tapas and vermouth, I opt for Algo Salvaje.
–And have many venues failed you?
–It makes me angry when I recommend a restaurant where they treated me well and then a follower goes and is treated badly.
–And how do they recognize her out there? Like the world synchro champion or the Olympic foodie?
–How nice it is when you arrive at a place and they tell you: ‘Hello, you’re the Olympian, right?’
–And, repeating the question that some followers asked you, can you eat everything?
–Man, I have no intolerances. I don’t like spicy food, so I tell the restaurant and that’s it. Alcohol is not good before a workout. But the problem is in my schedule. I finish training at 7 p.m., and if I go to a restaurant in Barcelona, ??I lose two hours between the round trip (I go by public transport from the CAR, where I have lived for eight years). Then I record and edit the video. And if I have time, late at night, I continue with my studies in Digital Design…
Reader, you see: not much of a nini.
