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This is a lesson: "If I had trained my son, today I would not do athletics"
Carlos Oriach is the father of Pol, A 16-YEAR OLD ATHLETE WHO HAS JUST MADE 3'45 "IN 1,500. A miracle at that age and today we want to know how this miracle has been achieved. "Pol has never done a beast training," adds the father who at the time understood that, as much as he knew about athletics, he should never be the coach of his son.
Merendó an Aquarius that bought in the cafeteria of the stadium of Serrahima.
They had forgotten the fruit at home. And they remembered it late when father and son were already in the car, on their way to Barcelona, 170 kilometers away, where Pol, the 16-year-old boy, was going to run a 1,500 with an empty gut, at the Criterium Josep Campmany. He had not eaten anything since noon when he ate some green beans and a steak, nothing more.
"But there's no problem," said Carlos, the father, "There are many days that you train with your belly empty."
"You have to throw reserve," he said.
But what nobody imagined was that what happened on the track would happen. Phondy, Fernando García Herrera, the legendary coach who made the world medalist in 3,000 obstacles in Paris to Eliseo Martín, had predicted that "you're fine, maybe to lose 3'50". Pol had listened to him "and, although my test is the 2,000 obstacles, we will see, we will see what I can do".
Neither imagined Pol that, when finishing that 1,500 in the stadium of Serrahima, it was going to him to poke "the pájara" that hit him. "I started to feel bad and I stayed half an hour that I could not move." When returning to the car, to return home, to Albelda, on the same border between Aragón and Catalunya, He fell asleep before so much tiredness "and I slept so deep that I do not even remember what I dreamed".
He had reasons to dream, really. There was a lot on the track. Guilt yours: one of those things that almost never happen. Carlos, the father, realized when he finished that neither Abascal, the great idol of his childhood, the athlete who signed him a photograph at 10 years old that he still keeps at home, he was able to make that mark that his son had just made at 1,500 at 16: the fifth best of all time.
I could not believe it, but I had to believe it.
Today, three days later, in the coldness of a summer afternoon without demands, the father goes further: "I did not even dare to think about that brand, why should you think about what does not seem possible?"
Carlos, the father, was the one that afternoon, seeing that behind the counter of the cafeteria they only saw pastries and no fruit, he said, "take only the Aquarius so that the sugar does not go down". Carlos, the father, really, is an athlete who at 24 years old came to do 8'58 "26 in 3,000 obstacles. Then, he took the oppositions to fireman and, for those things that happen in life, was seven years without competing until one day he returned.
He was 40 years old and he made 9'24 "in the 3,000 obstacles.
Today, he has 50 and, in spite of the problems that pursue him in the adductor, he has done 10'30 "this year what, among other things, indicates that he has lent a special genetics to his son Pol: genetics is a weapon so powerful ...
Without it, we would not be here.
We would not talk to Pol in an afternoon like today's where he's going to train at 7:30 pm; in which he only defines himself as "a village boy", who goes by bus to the institute, who has finished first year of Bachillerato with an average of 7.2 and who wants to study INEF. If it is needed in some subject, it is going to review and, yes, in winter never nails is put unless there is much mud in the crosses that runs on weekends. "As a child, I remember that my father took me to the crosses that he ran and I have that image engraved once when I saw him win and made me want to be like him in the future."
His father, however, never agreed to be his coach. "If it had been like that, surely now Pol would not do athletics, he would have complained, and I did not want that: I wanted Pol to know athletics having fun, to interpret it as a game, because that's the best way to get to know this sport . He was afraid that I could not give him that. I did not want to risk it happening to us. Parents should be at the side, but not pushing, not squeezing. "
Maybe that's why today it's so interesting to listen to the father: Carlos Oriach. "I see in Aragón that every year they beat the children's records and, however, later, when the time comes, those kids do not know again ... Then my feeling returns that if you burn stages before time we shortened the lives of the children. athletes And it is not like that. We parents can not demand so much from coaches. Athletics is a sport that can not be learned individually, I do not say that do not look at the clock among children, because everyone looks at it, but I defend that there are many ways of looking at it ".
In that sense Pol represents what he has learned from his coach, from that box of wisdom: "Run to what the body tells you that you can run, no more".
It's about not burning stages. "We are not looking for lactic acid. We never reach exhaustion in training. If I count the rhythms in the last training of 3 × 500, before the Serrahima, they would not believe it then I can do a 1,500 in 3'45 "But I do not remember the day that Pol has gotten a workout very beast ", insists the father, who still goes with him" in the shootings of 12 or 14 km "and helps him in the series," and if I see that I will not hold out I leave before he takes me and makes a little effort plus".
Pol is the median of three brothers. The same that trains in the afternoons, when leaving class in winter. The same as six days a week in which you can add "about 70 kilometers" and in which this winter came to do 7 × 1,000 or a pyramid of 3,000 × 2,000 × 1,000 at an average of 3'05 "" that is not so much either, "the father insists," but now it's about that. "
To live, to learn, to try what you have never tried.
Pol, who will turn 17 in September, came to run a 1,500 a few weeks ago in Fraga. "I made 3'53" throwing myself alone with a lot of cold and with the wind against ". He realized then that he was fine, the only passport known to achieve great things.
Phondy, an essential character in this story, the man who trains father and son, never takes things out of control. "This is mathematics," he says. "The much you have, the much you worth. Then, you just have to know how to square the numbers. "
The coach, like the father, has become accustomed to Pol almost always saying "good, good," mirroring a way of being in which the father as the mother, "who works in a travel agency of all kinds. life ", speak of a teenager" who is a great competitor, who is not afraid of anything ".
So one remembers that it is preferable not to be afraid, that the answers are almost always more interesting than the questions. "I did not remember that I had an empty stomach. I did not think of anything. I only thought that I was feeling well and running as fast as I could, "explains Pol, recalling the famous 1,500 at the Serrahima stadium that has gone down in history: his fault.
3'45 "56.
Barcelona, Criterium Josep Campmany.
We will never forget it, because we prefer not to forget it. We do not need to forget things that happen every so often.
We prefer to continue dreaming, which is the best we can do for now in this story domiciled in Albelda, a town of 800 inhabitants on the border between Aragon and Catalonia. Here everything began not so many years ago until Carlos, the father, realized that Pol had extraordinary potential and offered to go to Monzón, where he was going to receive a wise man when he passed to juveniles: Phondy. "We have nothing to lose," he said.
Tomorrow is still a distant horizon in which "we say no to nothing and of course we have talked about the CARs and that," explains the father. "But if what we have now works, why should we touch it? We need time to continue giving us information and the day we really know pros and cons we will decide. "
But today it is too early to decide. Pol Oriach is still 16 years old.