If you stop, you don’t win
Mario Cipollini
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Txell Figueras (29) tells me:
-I was twenty-something years old. He gave classes in a swimming pool and coordinated a group of instructors on the Costa Brava. And then they fired me.
-Because?
-Don’t know. But that hurt me. I went into crisis. I spent all my time crying, not knowing what to do with my life. And then I asked my mother (Esther): ‘What do I do?’ And she told me: ‘Look for what motivates you the most. And go for it.
–And what motivated you?
-The bike. And so I told my mother.
-And her?
–He told me: ‘If it is what motivates you, go to the maximum’. And for her I am giving everything.
And here we are now.
We are at Club Ciudad Diagonal, in Collserola. Txell Figueras has worn shorts. He wears the uniform of Buff Megamo, his mountain bike team. Txell Figueras is a high-level athlete, specialist in XCM (mountain bike marathon, a test that runs between 60 and 80 km).
It’s freezing cold and we have run to take refuge in the club’s cafeteria. We have turned on a radiator and we have ordered a coffee. After the talk, in the middle of the afternoon, Txell Figueras and the boss of the Buff Megamo, Pau Zamora, will go cycling through Collserola.
–How long do you plan to pedal? -asked them.
They both look at each other and agree on the answer:
“An hour is enough,” Txell Figueras tells me. Consider that this morning I have pedaled another two hours.
Are you a professional in this?
–I think about sport 24 hours a day. And that includes sleeping, eating, resting… But I have a part-time job, huh? I’m a swim coach at a pool in Salt.
(She and her partner, Dani Oliveras, rally co-driver, live together in Vilablareix.
“Swimming teacher?”
Txell Figueras smiled.
She tells me that she has a degree from INEFC. She has been a professor of Physical Activities in the Natural Environment at her university, the Euses Garbí de Salt.
–Before, I was a competitive swimmer. She belonged to the GEiEG. She contested the 200m butterfly and the 400m medley. I was bronze in a Spanish Championship in the lower categories. But at the age of 16 I injured my shoulder and it was over. I entered a phase of doubts. My father (Sito) signed me up for some triathlon talent detection tests at the Blume residence, in Esplugues. I barely knew how to ride a bike…
-And then?
–‘Don’t worry, it will only be running and swimming,’ my father told me. I did well in the swim and saved the run. They bet on four girls and two boys. I had my scholarship to study Baccalaureate at Blume. I stayed in for two years. I started to try the bike. Turns out I was really good at it.
Then the scholarship ran out and he went to the college in Salt, and at the same college, the BTT professor proposed to him to get the bike back.
–He left me his, and with it I went to the Copa Catalunya.
More proposals came. Jordi Arteman signed her up for his team, Artsport.
–It was always the last one, far from the rest. And suddenly, in a test, I caught a glimpse of a rival’s butt. And I said to myself: ‘I’m improving!’
And in a test in Banyoles, in 2017, he discovered that they no longer doubled it.
And then he lost his job and asked his mother for advice and the mother told him to bet on the bicycle and Txell Figueras listened to him, because there is only one mother.
–And I grew so much that the good results came. I started racking up podiums. I was runner-up in Spain. I even beat Irina Kalentieva, who had been world champion (twice) and wore the rainbow jersey. And they recruited me for a World Cup, and I left with my 34-tooth bicycle and the boys said to me: ‘Where are you going? Here everything goes up!’. And I: ‘Well, I’ve always run like this’. And they helped me with my teeth and taught me how to measure tire pressure. And now here I am, with my dream of the bicycle.
And he puts his hand on the radiator and turns to Pau Zamora, and says:
-We will?
Helmet, goggles and gloves.
They go out there, to the freezer, to get lost in Collserola.
The afternoon gives you its magic.
