The second gold medal for Spain in the Games of Barcelona ’92 arrived, on July 28, in the 200 back, from the hand of someone born in the United States.
From a stylized boy of 1.88 and 73 kilos named Martín López-Zubero, who spoke Spanish with american accent and whose name of Pila pronounced over there, depriving him a prosodic and orthographically of the Tilde: Martin.
Martín López-Zubero Purcell, born in Jacksonville (Florida) on April 23, 1969, Student of History at the University of Gainsville, was the son of an Aragonese ophthalmologist emigrated to the USA in 1955 and who, in his youth, he had played
Basketball at the CN Helios Zaragozano (Club Nativation CN).
The brother of him David of him, of the fifth of 59, had an Olympic bronze medal in the 100 butterfly in Moscow’s 100 butterfly.
And the sister of Him Julia, harvest of the 61, also Olympic in Russia, had won in 1978, ahead of Natalia, the 100 meters free at the Spanish Championship.
In this way, both, with the same time (59.5), became the first Spanish to swim the hectometer below the minute.
On horseback between two worlds, none of the three brothers had renounced, despite their crib, education and residence, Spanish nationality.
Martín claimed it more frequently.
With the assiduity of whom he was forced, by the predominant position of him in the aquatic ladder, to reinforce her with the word both or more than with the facts.
And so he endorsed it until the hartazo before the surprised, curious or malicious international press after gold in those 200 back, in which he enjoyed a unanimous favoritism.
He was the World Test Plusmarquist (and Champion) (1: 56.57).
He also the European champion.
He established entry between him and the rivals of him a chronometric difference broad enough to consider it a whole guarantee.
And that security margin gave the dessert the victory.
In preserves, Martín spent in fifth position by 100 and 150 meters.
But while he moved without almost consuming the fuel, the others did it pulling reservations.
Also benefiting from the ease of it for underwater swim, he already emerged in the head in the last long and stopped the chrono at 1: 58.47.
Although Olympic record, little thing for him.
Too much for the rest, even for Russian (unified equipment) Vladimir Selkov (1: 58.87) and Italian Stefano Battistelli (1: 59.40).
The triumph of López-Zubero enrolled among the most important in the history of the sport of our country.
It was the first time that a Spanish swimmer obtained a gold medal in addition, one of the three most important sports, along with athletics and gymnastics, games.
Still thinking about it, refer to the unmarkable lozy of the unique gestras.
Martín-Martin was the product of the genetic and environmental conjunction of two planets.
A synthesis.
Even a synergy.
In his way, and although at the end of the twentieth century, he was also a pioneer.
