Door 2 destroys Mayalen’s dream

“I will look for my best version,” says Mayalen Chouro (Lasart-Oria, Gipuzkoa, 41) before the K1 semi-final on the Vayre-sur-Marne canal. built northeast of Paris by employees of the National Workshops (an organization designed to provide work for unemployed Parisians after the February Revolution of 1848). In a place that has helped many families start over, the three-time Olympic medalist (bronze in London 2012, gold in Rio 2016 and silver in Tokyo 2020) saw similarities: “Today, everything starts from scratch, you have to go step by step.”

He finished the series in 13th place and the semi-final in 11th (twelve made it to the final) after struggling at Gate 2 and avoiding the tricky 7 and 8 without penalty. The 14th lottery has arrived, which includes a whirlwind that can take you or knock you off your ideal channel. Mayalen didn’t have the stars of luck, but he still used his enormous talent to overcome the difficulties and reach the medal round. There, everything started from scratch. But Mayalen again encountered the ghost that made him suffer in Paris 2024. “He will dream about Gate 2 for many days. He failed again. This is what he repeated to me when I arrived. In the first round, in the semi-final and now in the final. He saw it many times on video, but he thought he had it under control. Obviously, it was not like that,” said Xabi Echanis, his coach and teammate.

A 50-second penalty left him at the bottom of the table. There was no consolation. The only thing was that his participation in Paris was not over yet. On Friday, the 2nd, at 14:40 (the final will be held on Sunday, the 5th, at 16:45) Shorro begins his journey to kayak cross poker, a new kind of sport of the game in which four canoeists simultaneously fall from a two-meter ramp and compete in a race in which they can touch doors, do an eskimota (a 360-degree turn with their head underwater) and where almost anything is allowed. “A bit of yellow humor, rough and with many uncontrollable factors,” Echaniz compares to the famous television program.