“I do not believe it, I do not believe it, I already do not care, really, I do not care, if I am fourth, I’m happy,” confessed Maialen Chourraut to her husband and coach Xabi Etxaniz in the first hug of many,
Many of them would come later, and, although the pale was satisfied, he knew about the medal he was about to come: “Yes, maialen, yes, you already have it.”
They were in the white tent that Tokyo Games had placed on the Kasai Canal so that the first three classified awaits the rest and until then both had contained.
After competing, Chourraut came down from the canoe, looked at his time as dishes, almost in ‘shock’ and stood where they told him, in the place of the fastest then.
Etxaniz arrived a little later, to the race with his son Pau, of a previous, fourth relationship in the last junior junior world, and both were planted in front of her, right next to the camera, to shout a unique adjective
: “Amazing! Incredible!”
It had to be expected to pass two rivals and the third, the Italian Stefanie Horn, who did not exceed the time of Chourraut, canoeist and technician, husband and wife, no longer waited.
His embrace, pure emotion, was a surprise for Japanese volunteers, who did not understand such a sample of love in public, and a source of syncope for those in charge of the organization, who thought of the pandemic, “Please, please, distance
, distance “, not knowing that they spoke to two very cohanging.
Interestingly when the two melted, Chourraut still had no assured his third Olympic medal after the bronze of London 2012 Games and the Games of Rio 2016 games, but … “But I already gave me the same, really
I was equal. When I realized that I was there again, at my age, fighting with these Jabatas, which are fast, I have thought: ‘You have won’. If it ended fourth, fourth, but all that
We have spent the last few years has been so hard and so hard that I have not expected to celebrate. ”
But Xabi did it.
Although after the first hug he has already broke, the performance of the German Ricarda Funk, faster than Chourraut, finally gold, multiplied his nerves, made him start to turn around in the same square meter and only when the Slovak Eliska MinThova failed and
The podium was confirmed, the coach untied up.
Silver or bronze, it almost did not matter.
It was missing by lowering the Australian Jessica Fox, who could not with La Española, but even before that, Etxaniz and her son was already being removed from the cell phone, the flip flops and the accreditation.
They were going to throw themselves into the water, go if they were going to throw themselves into the water.
And, although they had to wait a lot, too much, because several leaders wanted to congratulate the canoeist, they finally did it.
“Maialen, hand! Give me the hand!” He shouted the coach who wanted to get away from the crowd that he already accumulated and immersed in his environment, the water, for there to be able to kiss his partner and join all together, Chourraut
, Etxaniz and Pau, in a last hug before the vortex of the questions of televisions, radios and newspapers.
“I have come to these proud games of me, without the pressure I had even the Rio Games for wanting to win an Olympic gold, that pressure weighed me a lot: when I got it, when I finally was Olympic champion, everything went out. All life
I had been demanding, demanding, demanding and returning from Brazil I had many injuries, I guess as a result of so much accumulated tension. In recent years I have fallen and got up many times. I have fought a lot and this medal … UF
I do not believe it, “Admitted Chourraut and his coach detailed more about the Calvary of Dolores lived from that summer 2016” until the summer of 2018 more or less “.
“Just when he arrived from Brazil, after giving him a lot of cane to the body, he was blocked from the back several days. Two months later, in October 2016, he began to suffer dizziness, he had several episodes during 2017, and when they already found the
way to solve, with some exercises that did in bed, began to feel pain in the ribs. We did not know what it was, we did not know what it was and in the end, with a TAC, we discovered that I had a fissure, “Etxaniz said
put into value what you got for your pupil.
“She has struggled it so much, but so much,” she repeated and remembered that she next to her Fox, Bronze, she became the first canoeist with three Olympic medals.
Then the two were looking for a moment to speak, just a moment, rather than a husband and wife, as a coach and pupil, in order to disrupt the descent and recognize that, in a canal as complicated as Kasai, the veteran took success.
Many of the rivals of him, as those who ended up accompanying him on the podium, Funk and Fox, are carrying canoeing at another level, approaching the times of men, going down at amazing speeds, but Chourraut became worth the experience.
“And it has not been the best possible descent, huh, but I have known my letters,” analyzed the third Spanish medalist at the Tokyo Games.
An more edition, the medalist who never fails.
