“I wouldn’t mind if they shortened my life, if they gave me the life I had” | Relief
As the different main characters go through The Locker Room, some common patterns emerge: one of the most subtle is the life of an athlete after retirement, his struggle to adapt to a completely new daily routine and nostalgia for the past. This makes a person 100% aware that he will not return. This statement may go unnoticed from the sofa at home, but for many of them it becomes an incurable wound. We don’t know if it belongs to Rafa Pascual, but what is certain is that so many years of happiness in the elite have left a scar on the best Spanish volleyball player in history. You just have to listen to him with Quique Peinado to understand it.
You can see Quique Peinado’s full interview with Rafa Pascual in El Vestuario here.
Hey, at 40 you stop playing volleyball, you have this emptiness that you talk about competing and I understand that no matter how much you choose when to stop, you have it. At this point you see that your working life in Spain is empty (I played abroad) and that you have to think about building a life from scratch in a difficult time. How did you deal with this?
After all, you rely a lot on the people who are close to you. I was lucky enough to work to save some money, I came with the intention of having time to adapt, because in France at 40, 42 years old I knew that this would happen. I was lucky enough to retire one day on the terrace of my house and say: “I don’t play anymore.” This doesn’t happen often. The traumatic part was more about stopping the life that made me happy. But like I said, it gave me time to build my retirement at the same time. So I suffered less from this withdrawal, but I suffered from it a lot because I liked to play sports. And I always give this example. It doesn’t matter the contract, the portfolio, the current account. When an athlete retires, he suffers greatly.
But first of all, as an athlete, I understand that everything is different because you start when you are small. I started working as a journalist when I was 24 years old. It’s not the same as playing since you were 10 years old.
This is your calling. I was lucky that since childhood I wanted to become an athlete and became an athlete. This was my life. So this is still my life. I have that mentality and sport is still my life. Unfortunately, I don’t play sports. I mean, I don’t play sports, I’m not involved in sports. I always manage to be with you and at the call of institutions and others in the spotlight, as an athlete who is clearly not very familiar with my sport. But I don’t work on my sport.
But are you the kind of person who would give a lot, a lot, a lot to return to volleyball and professional volleyball at the age of 30?
Look, I won’t say the name, but We lost a fantastic athlete at a very young age and I met my daughter. And I told him: “Don’t be sad, because your father was very happy.”. If you had to tell me today what would you change in order to live your life, and when you leave… let’s say so radically, because what I felt at that moment, the life that we lived and that we live in those years that we have sports and those of us who have had success and experienced the possibilities of participating in the Olympic Games, winning medals, being there… I wouldn’t mind if they shortened my life if they gave me the life I have. With this I will tell you everything. I mean, if at a very young age you said: “Well, you will live your life, but you will leave at 50.”. Let’s see, you think more about others, but If you were single, had no children, and didn’t leave anyone, as I say, suffering in your home, would you live a life like that for 50 years? Would you change it or would you live 80 years without doing what you did? I may be…
This isn’t the first time you’ve thought about this
No, this is not the first time I’ve thought about this. I thought about it at that moment and told the daughter of this great athlete that we had lost. The life he lived, many people could not live, even if they lived 100 years.. So don’t think he was unhappy. It was very nice. We certainly wish he had stayed for another 50 years, but don’t think he was unhappy because he made the decisions that he made. And I say the same thing. You’ll have to put me between a rock and a hard place to decide…
Summarizing; You tell me, even though I didn’t want it, that I’m playing one of these games of life for you and telling you: “Rafa Pascual, working all his life, I don’t know, owning a restaurant since he was 20 years old. old, are you better off or at least live to be 80? Or Rafa Pascual, the athlete, the life he lived, and they tell me you have to die at 50, and you choose to die at 50?
We are going to act very decisively. Taking into account the lives of my children… Of course, obviously, I think that whoever leaves leaves behind a lot of pain. I think whoever leaves leaves a lot of pain. Perhaps I think many of us would have decided… I was very happy. I think that’s one of the things they helped me with later. They helped me. I always compare. I always think that from what I’ve experienced, people always ask me, “How are you doing?” How are you? I say: “Okay.” I won’t speak badly, that would be dishonest.. I think it would be unfair to say that Rafa Pascual is in bad shape due to many difficulties or unfair circumstances. But Yes, I know that many athletes or many people have had a difficult time.. In my world I talk about sports, we talk about sports here, we have bad times in all areas. They are doing very poorly in sports. Because? Because Then they find neither motivation nor time to adapt, they do not find help, they do not find support. Many of us disappearbut I was lucky that I didn’t get injured, that I didn’t have a serious injury like other athletes, and it’s not easy to bear because We all wish we could live the same life I lived before I was 42 years old..
Oscar Trejo said that he left home very young and that locker rooms were where he also received his education. I don’t know if this is true for an athlete, especially for one who started very young.
This is true because outside of the game and training we behave completely differently. We are very different, we are people who often play with one type of character in one key and transform, which often happens with artists, with singers when they go on stage. Athletes are very similar, and outside of this we are also different people, with our own problems, our own difficulties, our own families. and Bthe mouth is like a connecting link. The union of all these things, and it is here that in such moments all these problems and difficulties appear and arise.. And I think the hardest thing is not going to the locker room when you retire.
More than sports, the hardest thing is leaving the group, or what?
It’s very difficult, I think that in life you were on a team and all your life you were with this bag, in the locker room, locker rooms, your group, your moment. I think that This is what you really miss the most, more than the game.
Hey, you keep talking about the athlete in the first person, from the present. A person does not cease to be an athlete, even if he left professional sports many years ago.
Well, he is still an athlete, at least in mentality. I think that’s what sport leaves you with, it teaches you. He will teach you many things that you will end up taking with you later. Even if you don’t play sports later in your life at work, with family, with a group of friends and the like, at the end of the day you always try to act the way you acted in that moment, and these are the moments when perhaps you achieved the greatest results where you felt most comfortable.
Yes, but also athletes, with the level of demands on yourself that many of you have, if you live this lifestyle on the street, I also understand that you can be a little unbearable to your family or your environment.
Yes Yes, we are a little, let’s say, not unbearable, but yes, with the level of individual requirements that we have had throughout our lives. Because in the end, sport, no matter how short it may be, in the overall context of life, long and great, you live it as if it were, I don’t know, thousands of years. I often talk to people and tell them: “No, look, listen, for an athlete to be at a high level for 10 years is already an achievement for an athlete, this is milk, this is a gigantic career.