News : Ana Peleteiro: now that we are calmer

Today marks one month of Ana’s Olympic medal. A day that sums up many days since we saw her collect the Princess of Asturias Award at the age of 16. “Life put me many obstacles …, but the limits were set by me “.

Now that we are calmer.

Now that a month has passed since Ana Peleteiro’s medal and it still seems like yesterday.

I remember it was Sunday, August 1, noon in Spain.

Between all of us we understood the most important thing.

That Ana Peleteiro, before being an Olympic medalist, had already learned to dominate time.

He chose a unique moment to get closer to 15 meters.

Solved his sports life at the age of 25.

Whatever happens from now on, Ana Peleteiro will always be a star.

It already was, actually, before arriving in Tokyo.

At age 16, she was proclaimed junior triple jump world champion in Barcelona 2012 and the jury recognized her with the Princess of Asturias award to the best young athlete.

Then came a confusing time (it’s true).

I remember that, when one heard the name of Ana Peleteiro, one remembered that maxim of athletics that is almost never wrong: “Of the junior medalists only 30 or 35% succeed in the elite.”

But it is what gives more merit to all this.

Ana is a woman who has lived several lives and who made use of her ability to reinvent herself. On her forearm there is a tattoo of a lioness that, according to her, represents “strength, supremacy.”

Exactly all that then, in the summer of 2012, seemed the property of that girl who even allowed herself the luxury, even having the minimum, of refusing to go to the London Games.

But then what I told them happened.

Her name disappeared from the elite and made us think and made us fear for her.

He changed city and coach with a frequency that, from a distance, did not invite to think the best.

I remember reading the anxiety attack that occurred to that child prodigy in the hospital when she found out that a domestic accident was keeping her from going to the 2015 World Cup in Beijing.

I was 19 years old and it seemed that time was slipping away without giving explanations as with things that have no explanation.

But we always have the possibility of not giving up.

Ana preferred to do it that way and today her language is one more part of her strength.

There is an old phrase of his on Twitter, which portrays without cowardice what his life gives of himself:

“Life put me many obstacles …, but the limits were set by me “.

Ana Peleteiro found the key to her destiny as the girl who was world champion at 16.

“A drop of water can break a stone not because of its strength but because of its perseverance,” she wrote herself.

He found the necessary peace in the silent Guadalajara, where he has a coach Iván Pedroso, nine times world champion in length, which is a Cuban myth that wakes up every day singing:

“If you like what you do, you have no barriers.”

And it is a message that also applies to us

“There are good days and bad days when it is better to sit down and stop and think,” adds Pedroso.

And I myself stop to think while I write.

And I understand again that I have written of the best of the best that exists in athletics (an Olympic medal) and that all hugs are still necessary.

Ana Peleteiro has waited nine years. He has known how to wait until he couldn’t wait any longer.

Ana Peleteiro is now a 25-year-old woman with an imposing authority over herself that could only end this summer on the Olympic Games podium.

The great Jonathan Edwards still remembered that girl from 2012 to whom he said:

– Keep it up, Ana, keep it up.

And Ana continued.

And he discovered that continuing is also overcoming obstacles.

And we understood that this is one of the missions of time.

That of helping us to value things more and to reinforce the memory of the people, which gave us such a great time of happiness.

And in the summer of 2021 Ana Peleteiro Brion was one of them.

A month later I’m still feeling it like it just happened.