Looking out over the Heroes’ Square in Budapest, Julia Takacs (34) feels in her element.
He has returned to his hometown, has been contemplating the 35 km walk and has seen how a handful of Spaniards, men and women, competed simultaneously, encouraging each other as they passed each other, to achieve very great things, the greatest : He has seen how María Pérez (27) and Álvaro Martín (29) took over the gold in the 35 km, just as a handful of days ago they had taken over the gold in the 20 km.
(These are two unique milestones: never, in the forty-year history of the World Cups, has a Spanish athlete been on the podium twice in the same edition; and never, in the history of the World Cups, has a country monopolized gold in the four gait tests).
-We are doing well -says Takacs, Spanish feels and looks, because she had landed in Madrid at the age of five, and as a Spanish walker she had played Games and World Cups, and has a European bronze (2018), and had retired in 2022 , victim of a meniscus injury-. This is a good time for the Spanish march.
Julia Takacs, who now lives in Viladecans and works in a telephone management company, has been talking to me about technical changes.
He talks about the transformation of María Pérez, from a Russian-style military marcher to a fluid marcher, “like the Latin Americans who are in fashion, like the Peruvian Kimberly García”, or about the powers of Álvaro Martín, or about the subjectivity of the decisions of the judges.
And as he reflects, he adds:
-Because look how Maria has recovered. That her people have spent a few days worried. They thought that her sciatic problems were a thing of the past, and they hadn’t appeared in a long time.
From Sunday to this Thursday, María Pérez has spent four days fallow, marching in the pool of the Spanish hotel, not on the synthetic that goes around Isla Margarita, because on Sunday, when accelerating to go for the gold of the 20 km, had noticed a puncture and had been sore, confused by her setback.
(For the same reason, he has asked his physiotherapists, Miquel Àngel Cos and Patricia Morales, to accompany him to pose for his first photo after crossing the finish line).
-In the 20km I had finished very lame, I have spent mornings and afternoons with the physios. And even so there were doubts that I would be able to finish these 35km: I had to change the strategy. If I had thrown the changes from the other day, my sciatic could have been pinched, so I had to accelerate gently.
But it has arrived.
And hers has been a perfect exercise, a display of faculties that has taken shape at km 19 and has been rounded off in the following partials, faster and faster, more and more involved in her role.
Five seconds ahead of the rest, then ten, and thus ends up going very far, more than a minute behind the opponents, to the despair of Kimberly García, the double world champion from last year in Eugene, who now saw how the double champion was going to be the other one, María Pérez, the little girl from Granada who, because she was so over the top, had even lost her sense of time and space and, by mistake, was already celebrating the title 2.5 km from the finish line.
(She has signed 2h38m40s, more than two minutes on the Peruvian walker, a legend in her country since no other Peruvian has ever reached a world podium).
Half an hour earlier, Álvaro Martín (29) had seen himself before the demons.
-I had launched my change at km 29, but a couple of km later they caught me (the Ecuadorian Pintado and the Japanese Kawano, silver and bronze at the end), and then the world came crashing down on me -he said-. So I’ve said to myself: ‘If I can’t win physically, I’ll have to win psychologically. And the last thing Pintado expects is my attack.’
And, with 1.5 km to go, he said:
-Now.
And there it has struck again.
A sharp acceleration, of a thousand-year-old in a tactical race, and Pintado was already beginning to nod, and the matter has been settled:
From there, how to stop him?
“Look, you haven’t paid attention to me,” José Antonio Carrillo, Martín’s coach, called out to him as they both hugged each other. Look, I have told you that when you attack, don’t get caught anymore.
“Sorry, sorry,” his pupil apologized, laughing.
“Well, you see it,” added Carrillo, now speaking to the press. As a coach, I already have three world gold medals (the two for Álvaro Martín in Budapest and the one for Miguel Ángel López in the 20km in Beijing 2015). The march, the march!
(In Budapest, López finishes 12th and Marc Tur, 22nd; and among the women, Cristina Montesinos is fifth and Raquel González, 13th).
