Life is not about finding yourself, it’s about creating yourself
Bernard Shaw
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In my pistard days, I was watching them with a good range of athletes from Mercè Rosich (70), people who often trained on the slopes of Congost, in Manresa. I fought with Ivo Clotet, Llorenç Bonet, Josep Maria Roselló or Chema Artero. In Varazdyn’s Junior Europe, in Yugoslavia at the end of the 80s, he shared a room with Albert Casals.
Sooner or later, most of the Catalan athletes have passed through the hands of Mercè Rosich.
Those of before have done it, those of now do it and those of tomorrow will do it.
Mercè Rosich has been a middle-distance runner, and has also been our coach, our meeting organizer, our board of directors or our psychologist.
For a year and a half, Mercè Rosich has also been our president, the first woman to chair Catalan athletics, and Catalan athletics celebrates her.
(The reader cannot imagine how many former athletes have contacted me these days to send their regards; other elite former athletes who know and are passionate about this sport shine on their board).
(…)
When we take a seat in the Jaime Arias room of La Vanguardia, the evocations take flight.
– What has happened to that one, or the other one, Casals, Clotet…? – I ask him.
And Mercè Rosich talks to me about one or the other, because she keeps in touch with everyone, it will be because it comes from the series or also because it suits her in the position.
She’s our president for a reason.
When I ask her how it has been in the world of athletics as a woman, or how it had been in the past, she just answers:
–The truth is that I barely suffered for it.
And if I ask him why he left athletics at the age of 23 (he wasn’t doing bad at all, he had won the Jean Bouin at 19, he had played an international match, he had shared experiences and races with the legendary Carmen Valero…) then he answers me:
-She had just become a mother (she has two children: Gemma and Gustau), she was already a teacher, she was starting to study Psychology at the UB and had decided to set up an athletics school in Manresa, the EMA (Escola Manresana d’Atletisme).
(The EMA is still alive and well.)
It couldn’t all be…
I used to get up early, huh? And I am an only child and I had the family support of my parents and my in-laws. And the girls’ father, Julià Vilellas, who was a speed coach, understood my work because he shared my enthusiasm. That was a great time!
And his gaze is dreamy.
–In the 90s, I did a doctorate on happiness in sport.
–¿…?
–I developed a scale on satisfaction in sport. I surveyed 200 Manresa students of the First and Second ESO. He wanted to know if they were happy.
-They were?
–Those who practiced sports were often much happier.
-Well, running a 1,500 has fabric…
–Of course, no athlete should lose perspective. I always say to all my athletes: ‘How are you grades?’. Training is key: sport does not give enough to make a living from it.
“Everything can’t be…
-If you want, you can. You can study a career in five or eight years. It can be studied in many ways. Valentí Massana won Olympic medals while graduating in Physics.
“You’re shooting yourself in the foot.” As president, you will be interested in seeing a Catalan athlete get results… –I observe him.
–It is true, the federation wants results. Although I prefer that athletes take something more than a medal or a record: personal, social and work empowerment. There is an age in which it is more important to prepare for an exam than to be a Catalan champion.
–La Catalana can help you as much as she can… –I commented.
Finances are always squeaky. We have two sources: the Consell General de l’Esport and the federation files. One of my challenges is to find sponsorship to organize more meetings, improve scholarships and grow in the media. Do you know that we organize 250,000 performances in one season? To disseminate them, we have designed a new website and we publish chronicles. We are going to sell the product like it has never been done before.