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The 15-year-old girl who gets up at 4:30 to study
His trainer Felix Laguna explains to the other Salma Paralluelo; the one that has prevented his family from seizing the house, the one that already has a press officer or the one who prefers to train to stay in the pool of a magnificent hotel. "On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, he will train football and on Tuesdays and Thursdays he will go to athletics."
-Look, Salma, which is very far and the taxi is very expensive.
He still had not given them enough time to leave their luggage. The trip had been long, with the delays that sometimes happen in travel. Salma Paralluelo, 15 years old, had just arrived with her coach at Punta Umbría, where the hotel where they were staying was located. A luxury hotel where you could spend a gorgeous afternoon in the pool: Resting. But the girl insisted on her trainer, Felix Laguna, in that she had to go to the Huelva track, to try for the rally the next day, to do her things. And it did not diminish in the effort. "At the end, they told us about a track in Punta Umbría and, although they told us that it was very bad, we went because she did not conceive it in any other way ".
The taxi cost 35 euros and, it is true, the track was a mess. But they went and on the return trip brought them a coach who should have been "sorry" and thank goodness that the man brought them: "We were almost late for dinner".
But the next day, Salma Paralluelo beat the world record of 400 hurdles: 57'43. Nobody at his age in the world He has been able to do something like that. The news crossed the pond and that coach, who brought them in the car, maybe is still counting: "I took Salma in the car."
We came to understand that this girl, who has finished fourth of ESO, is a gold mine. Today I only address to his coach to tell me about her and, after explaining myself what happened in Huelva, relates that "this is crazy. You can not even imagine. Since November they have come to record more than 20 television channels to his institute, to his house ... He could also talk about managers ... Before this avalanche, his father has had to hire a journalist who makes him as head of press.
Salma is 15 years old. It will not be until the 16th until November. But it could be said that she, the girl from Zaragoza, from the worker's neighborhood of San José, "Where in the first municipal elections the Communist Party always won", the world has already been eaten. One dares to define it as a gold mine and Felix Laguna, his coach, does not say no, "because he jumps and runs like no other and is as skilled as any".
Her father is unemployed and, thanks to Salma, whose appearance has meant a significant income, the girl has prevented the family from seizing the house. The girl is Salma, which Felix Laguna was used to seeing in the School Games of Zaragoza. "I saw a black girl, who ran badly, quite inclined and who still always won." Fate wanted that one day that girl came to see him with his father Scorpio-71 club, where Felix is technical director with 17 coaches in charge. "He told me that the coach, who had before, had started asking for money and they could not pay him."
In a school with 380 children, that was no problem. "Do not worry," replied Felix, who did not have to fight any internal battle: "How could I say no?"
It occurs to me to ask him then why he had not gone before to look for her and he replies: "It is not our way of thinking or that of our club. If he knew us, he would not ask that question. "
It's hot in Zaragoza, where words do not hide a palace: Salma Celeste Paralluelo who, besides being an athlete, is a footballer at Zaragoza CFF Second Division. Play from left side as in athletics, "where passes the fences better with the left leg than with the right". But that has not prevented her from leaning to infinity at 15 years old or being the youngest athlete to win a medal in an absolute Spanish Championship. "On Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, he will train football and on Tuesdays and Thursdays he will go to athletics."
What happens is that there are days when she gets so tired to train that Felix sends her home. And do not regret it.
-Look, if you're tired, do not come -explains-. Rest is also training.
But she rejects:
-But it's that I want.
And the coach imposes his voice:
-And I want you to rest.
And Salma not only has a genetics coming from Africa. Also an intelligence that in the institute allows him to go to course per year and even to surprise a guy like his trainer: Felix Laguna. A man who is also a dining room monitor at a school; who was widowed two years ago and who is the father of a 22-year-old boy, who does not lack much to finish industrial engineering, and a girl of 19 who wants to start ADE which will not allow you to retire at 65. "I'll have to continue in the trenches."
To this man, who already knows Latin, Salma tells him that she, the 15-year-old girl, when she arrives home at nine, tired, to train, does not start studying or doing homework, ("why am I going to try it if I'm so tired? ") but dinner and lie down. "Then, he gets up at four thirty in the morning and, much cooler in his head, he starts studying." And he is doing well.
Because she is not a girl to use. She is a girl (adolescent, if anything) who, at the age of 15, has participated in a World Cup, that of Uruguay U-17; She is a girl who has won the Jean Bouin five times in a row and she is a girl who has even gone to an absolute European Athletics, Glasgow. We are still wondering: How can you do so much in such a short time?
But here we continue, writing, reducing distances with infinity, explaining that the same day that Salma arrived from Uruguay, winner, entertained in Madrid, admired everywhere she went. That day he came home and played with his team, Zaragoza CFF, who lived an urgent game. And just after finishing it he asked Felix, his athletic trainer, what time he had to go to train tomorrow at the Palacio de los Deportes.
The coach refuted:
- What happens that you do not have friends, family ...?
-Yes I have them.
-Well, enjoy them and forget about training that life has also been done to enjoy yours. You've been away from home for a long time.
They are the keys to this story that brings out the best in us. It has all the history: a very humble neighborhood, a family in distress and a coach who imagines that one day (not too long) he will stop being the trainer of Salma Paralluelo (they have already found him a nutritionist). "But nothing will happen if it's good for her," he says, "what's good for her in the future will be good for me."
Felix Laguna has been since the age of 11 in athletics where he became bronze of 400 meters in a junior Spanish Championship in those tracks of ash "in which 12 nails were used and holes had to be made in the ground to go out with drive " She told him all that and she will not stop telling Salma "and she listens, because she has the ability to listen and because listening is also part of this story".
A story in which Felix does not relate brutal training. "I do not know, I could talk about rhythms of 800 meters on the grass, of jogs of 20'00", of 2 × 200 ... But, above all, of lifting the foot, of inflating it. Because when an athlete supports her feet and her knees bend in our slang that is an athlete who is deflating and that is what we have to prevent. Especially her, who comes from football. "
You can also say it in another way: "Salma does not just run: she also moves and moving is more difficult than running. " And to get close to perfection "we must insist. And that is tedious. But it is that a javelin thrower spends his whole life to take two or three moves. Reeducate, build ..., we can not separate ourselves from those ideas. "
Salma Celeste Paralluelo today is 15 years old. Tomorrow will have more and will have to decide and the decision will take it. It will not be taken by his coach, who today only tells him to gather all the information he can so that the day he arrives will be the most accurate decision possible. " And, be it football or athletics, be it Saragossa or whatever city, Felix Laguna makes an unforgettable reading of life: "It is important to know pros and cons of what you want to be the rest of your life", says almost all the days to Salma Paralluelo, in these days of so much publicity with the dangerous thing that can get to be the publicity.