Beyond the traditional version of Mariano García, the Murcian who, in the tense call room, forms a trumpet with his hands and blows Happy Birthday before collapsing and finishing sixth in the 800 final (nothing to do with histrionics calculated by Noah Lyles, another defeated talent), in Glasgow the silhouette of Iván Pedroso is illuminated, a prodigious former Cuban jumper who, also prodigious as a coach, leads in Guadalajara the careers of Ana Peleteiro (28) and Fátima Diamé (27), both bronzes in Scotland, the first in the triple and the second, in the length.
All the athletes function in Pedroso’s world, Yulimar Rojas functions, absent in Glasgow because she is reserved for the Olympic event, and the Spanish women function as squires for the Venezuelan avatar.
In the morning, Ana Peleteiro (28) vindicates herself, a kind of Renaissance woman, who has been Lúa’s mother for a year and a half, and a personality that reclaims femininity and defends skin color, and an influencer and also a occasional model, and also triple rider.
Ana Peleteiro remembers that, when she was growing up, she wanted to play tennis because there were two black tennis players “who were amazing.”
(Refers to the Wiliams, Venus and Serena).
He denounces that in Spain there is no racism, “but classism.”
She claims that her ex-partner had sexually abused her.
She remembers that her biological mother had abandoned her shortly after her birth.
And, by expressing his message, he earns recognition. She appears on the Forbes list: in 2022, her statistics considered her one of the 100 most influential women in our country.
Peleteiro can do everything, who trusts in herself just as her husband, the former triple jumper Benjamin Compaoré, and also Pedroso, and even Yulimar Rojas, trust in her, all of them people who live and train in Guadalajara, eventual quarry of jumpers of our country.
When her turn comes, Ana Peleteiro tenses in the hallway.
The voice:
–Let’s gooooo!
This is how you win over the Emirates Arena audience.
He hits himself in the chest.
With your index finger, mark forward, mark the route to follow.
And it hits again.
Now, on the thighs.
Finally it starts and accelerates, and on the line it projects forward. The first attempt is fair. Lands at 13.93m. But the second time he goes up to 14.67m, and thus he settles in the podium area. No one is going to evict her from there, and even so she grows more: she goes up to 14.75m in the fifth jump and finishes bronze.
(Thea Lafond, from Dominica, wins, flying up to 15.01m in the second jump and already puts on her sweatshirt and sits on the bench next to the pit and, confident, does not jump anymore; the silver goes to the Cuban Leyanis Pérez , who stays at 14.90m and is never happy, she always whines and complains, things have not turned out as expected).
Peleteiro is something else, the years go by and he continues there, he lasts forever: he already has two bronzes in the Indoor World Championships, and three European podiums, and the jewel in the crown, the bronze from the Tokyo Games.
Like Peleteiro, Fátima Diamé, from Valencia of Senegalese parents, also claims her femininity and her blackness.
He has been demanding respect for some time: he does it from his Instagram account. Half a million followers like her, but some go too far in praising her.
“Slobbers,” Diamé called them months ago, disappointed by the sexualization of her body. The people who see me in YouTube videos are morbid people who then come to Instagram and flood me with comments and private messages.
Now, let’s assume, his profile will be filled with admirers who applaud his talent as an athlete, a virtue that jumped onto the international scene this Sunday, right in the fifth round, when he went up to 6.78m and, in one fell swoop, advanced four positions and bronze was placed.
(She was only surpassed by the Americans Tara Davis-Woodhall and Monae Nichols, with 7.07 and 6.85).
So Pedroso’s disciples have come to the rescue of Spanish athletics, these days fragile in the powerful middle distance, who would have thought it in another time: Mariano García stumbled in the 800, Adel Mechaal was sixth in the 3,000 and he was also sixth in the 1,500 that was won by Geordie Beamish, the New Zealander who hugged Mario García Romo at the finish line (both train together in Boulder).
María Vicente, woman 10, tore her Achilles tendon and lost everything, including the flight to the Paris Games.
And Asier Martínez, the prodigious hurdler who was competing for medals in the 60 hurdles, was disqualified in the semifinal and did not even compete in the final (the other great Spanish hurdler, Quique Llopis, would finish fourth).
