Grow Without Complexes | 2024 Olympic Games in Paris

The quarter-finals of the European Football Championship. 2008. I watch with friends and our children. The match and overtime end in a draw. These are penalties. Italy is opposite. Almost nothing. I stand up and say what probably worries all adults. We are definitely going to lose. The younger ones are looking at us. What is this pessimism about? Why don’t we beat them? 2024. The great Mariano Haro passes away. These two moments, at first glance unrelated, can explain one of the keys to the evolution of Spanish sport. Let’s start with Mariano.

…

The quarter-finals of the European Football Championship. 2008. I watch with friends and our children. The match and overtime end in a draw. These are penalties. Italy is opposite. Almost nothing. I stand up and say what is probably on the minds of all adults. We are definitely going to lose. The younger ones are looking at us. What is this pessimism about? Why don’t we beat them? 2024. The great Mariano Haro passes away. These two moments, at first glance unrelated, can explain one of the keys to the evolution of Spanish sport. Let’s start with Mariano.

Nicknamed the “Lazarillo de Tormes of Spanish athletics”, as Carlos Arribas explains in his excellent article, Haro, like no other, represents the social and sporting moment of a country that was already in its fourth decade of dictatorship. Lacking structures and resources that could significantly help in sports planning and development, Haro, like Bahamontes or Paquito Fernández Ochoa, was the result of spontaneous generation and had to find a way to train and compete in minimal conditions. He compensated for these shortcomings with innate intelligence, the capacity for suffering and a dose of mischief. From then on, everything was very Spanish.

When the competition starts, you have the image of him running surrounded by athletes from the Nordic countries who were taller, stronger and had longer strides. There were also African athletes, with all that comes with traveling long distances. Mariano fought, Mariano always seemed like he could win, but Mariano never came first. He also had a chance at an Olympic medal in Munich ’72, until the last stretch it seemed like he would get it, but history repeated itself, finishing in the worst possible Olympic place, fourth.

Why did we adults think we were going to be eliminated on penalties? Well, because our sporting education was more influenced by failures than successes, more by inferiority complexes than by competitive safety, more by goals we thought were unattainable than by stimulating goals. We grew up seeing defeats, not reaching finals, winning medals in small ways. The 60s and 70s were a sporting wasteland that was exactly what Spain was in those days of Nodo and the black and whites.

The 80s arrived, democracy and the awakening to a new era with the emergence of some individual and collective examples that have freed us from many dandruffs. Perico, Seve, Fernando Martin or the basketball team gradually broke down stereotypes and barriers until the 92 Barcelona Games, the first where public and private institutions gave the necessary incentive to our athletes to find the necessary environment to train and compete. The result was impressive.

What we have seen and enjoyed for more than two decades has been achieved by the heirs of those winners of the 90s, girls and boys who, in the process of learning and growing up, did not have to face any restrictions when it came to dreaming about goals. what previously seemed unattainable. From the impossible, we went to why not? Hence the confusion of our children. Before his pure, optimistic and possible gaze, we, the floaters, appeared, those of us for whom Mariano Haro was both great and small as our hero.

Speaking of people who don’t believe in the impossible (perhaps inspired by examples like the indestructible Amaya Valdemoro), I find myself again in front of the women’s basketball team. This Sunday against China was another demonstration of faith, character, confidence and emotional control. Scariolo said yesterday that it is difficult for them to compete with the NBA, which has such physicality. The Spanish women’s team had to face an obvious disadvantage, especially under the hoop, and they managed to survive. They lost everything, but they kept on persisting until they achieved a victory that is called miraculous, in which there is little miracle, but a lot of talent and competitiveness.

Finally, Nadal, who grew up watching Corretja, Ferrero and Moya win Grand Slams and Davis Cup titles, has agreed to meet Nole Djokovic. I’m marking it in red on my calendar. I know there’s not much to be optimistic about, but why not?

You can follow EL PAÍS Deportes on Facebook And Xor register here to receive Daily Newsletter of the Paris Olympic Games.