-Let’s see, boss, what do I do when I get to Japan?
-What are you doing? You are going to the best World Cup, where there will be very few jumpers, the best, so you with them, in their wake and make things firm for Pedroso. That’s what I’m telling you.
-Okay, done, when I see it, I’m going to beat him.
This is how Juanjo Azpeitia and Yago Lamela spoke one of the first days of March 25 years ago, on the eve of the Maebashi Indoor Athletics World Cup. That’s how Azpeitia, at least, a Galician athletics teacher and coach (from Cangas do Morrazo), former long and triple jumper and coach, remembers it. Lamela was still a 21-year-old Asturian boy, pure strength and speed, who had just jumped 8.22 meters, one centimeter away from the historic national record of Antonio Corgos. A practically unknown outside the world of athletics. A marvel whose potential very few knew about. Pedroso was God. The god of the long jump, at least. An elastic and light Cuban, fast as lightning and with ankles like springs. He was then 26 years old. He was untouchable. Invincible since 1993. Twice outdoor world champion, three times indoors, a best mark of 8.71m, in his legs the ability to beat the world record (8.95m by Mike Powell) and reach the nine meters, and in the head the search for the ideal moment.
“That’s what Yago told me, I’m going after Pedroso,” remembers Azpeitia, who did not travel to Maebashi and did not sleep in the early hours of March 7, 1999, Sunday, when it was already noon in Japan and his athlete began to show that He wasn’t a braggart. “We guests are normally in the worst place in a stadium. There was no zero line for coaches and I don’t know if I could have helped him much with the heeling or with some advice, although knowing me and with the shouts I make it is possible that we could do something Have done. But look, I wasn’t needed there. He alone managed to put Pedroso to rest.”
Glued to the TV, and glued to the phone, talking with other technicians, like Ramón Cid, with other Cuban jumpers, Azpeitia lived one of the most extraordinary nights in the history of Spanish athletics, an exchange of jumps like punches, blows and responses, pure boxing match in the sand pit, a ring and two athletes. In the first jump, Lamela went up to 8.10m. Pedroso responded with 8.46m.
“And I already thought I had won, of course,” recalls the Cuban jumper who today trains Ana Peleteiro, Tessy Ebosele and Yulimar Rojas, and the best Spanish long-distance jumpers, Héctor Santos and Eusebio Cáceres. “I went like I always did. First attempt to win and then look for the fast marks. But when I saw his sequence, going up, up and up, I said to myself, ugh, this is getting a little complicated.”
“Pedroso, who is the most relaxed person I know, told me later, ‘teacher, your pupil got on my nerves,’ says Azpeitia, who continued frantic that morning, shouting into the phone, the crescendo sequence of the Avilés jumper. . “Each jump was a, hoopé, an ah, this is not over! Oops, this is not over! Wow, this is going to get worse! This is going to get more! “
After a failure in his second, Lamela broke the Spanish record for the first time (8.29m) in the third, and again with the fourth, 8.42m, now only four centimeters behind Pedroso, who accumulated frustrated flights and null. “Nulls are null,” says Pedroso. “Iago was good, he was good, he was good. He was coming up for promotion, you know? That is the most dangerous thing about athletes. He made me always be 100%.”
Yago Lamela’s sixth was immediately dubbed the great jump of Spanish athletics: 8.56m, a European indoor record. It should be the gold jump. There was only one athlete left to jump. It was Pedroso. “Despite everything, in the end I was fine because the nulls he was doing were very long,” says the Cuban. “I only tried in the sixth not to give a null and, well, I already did it.” Boom. 8.62m. Championship record. “Yes, yes, yes”, I already knew that all of Spain was going to curse me then,” says Pedroso. Azpeitia did it, but the minimal disappointment of not winning the World Cup did not compensate for the immense joy of knowing that Yago Lamela had gone where no Spanish jumper had gone before. “This is how a Spanish athlete later appeared on the news for the first time in history, opening the news, right?” says the Galician coach. “It was amazing. Who would expect 8.56m? I don’t know, 8.15m, 8.20m, it already seemed like God’s, but 8.56m seemed incredible. It was like Bob Beamon, one fucking jump and goodbye.”
In Maebashi, a star was born who broke the closed world of athletics like lightning and who five and a half months later had to flee in a rush from dozens of people, enthusiastic fans, who were chasing him in the Corte Inglés in Seville, which he had entered to buy some batteries. What has never been seen with an athlete. Thursday, August 26. Outdoor World Cup. In the Estadio de la Cartuja, at seven in the stifling afternoon, and the humidity of the Guadalquivir, the stands are a deafening chorus, Yago! Iago! Yago!, and it’s just the length rating. Lamela’s first two jumps are two nulls. The third is the final one. Another null would mean the absence of Saturday’s final. The Spaniard needs to jump 8.10m, the third jump to qualify. A critical moment. “What are you going to tell Iago to do?” They ask Azpeitia, who that day, yes, guides his pupil in the heeling. “Nothing,” responds the Galician coach. “Let him do whatever he wants.” Unwillingly, in the last attempt, Lamela jumps 8.15 meters. “How have you solved the problem of nulls?” they ask the Asturian at night. “Ah, very easy,” he replies. “Take me one foot forward.” The counterintuitive solution (normally when you step on the clay it is normal to delay the starting point by one foot: it seems logical) surprises the technicians, who take a long time to process the fact before realizing that what is surprising is the sensible thing to do: if an athlete stays far from the board after the last step, he usually doesn’t jump.
It seemed more surprising to the world that two days later, two police motorcyclists in front and a car with the siren blazing behind made way for Lamela’s car and his coach on the way between the Meliá Los Lebreros, where the Spanish team was staying, and the La Cartuja Stadium. More than anyone else, the athlete himself was surprised, introverted, in his world, so oblivious to the scandal he was organizing that it was even difficult for his people to wake him up from his nap to go to the final in which all of Spain was waiting for him. “I think Yago didn’t know much about the party, which was wonderful,” says Azpeitia. “I had this capacity of, well, when the time comes I’ll go. And he was surprised. ‘Why do we have to go in a car guarded by the police?’, he told me. ‘It seems that you have forgotten that you broke the world speed record to get to the hotel from the Corte Inglés…’
Lamela had jumped 8.56m again two months earlier, at the Turin rally. He was the favorite. Tremble, Pedroso, shouted the fans. But this time, the Cuban was waiting for him. “There I was already prepared because I knew I was in their country, in their history, and I was coming off an injury,” says Pedroso, who in his entire career did not achieve a valid jump of more than 8.71m, but ended up winning nine World Cups. and an Olympic gold in Sydney 2000. “’Look,’ I told myself, ‘I’m going to solve the problem in three acts and then let it be whatever God wants. So it was”. Lamela fought: 8.34m on the first attempt, compared to Pedroso’s 8.19m; void in the second and void in the third, in which the Cuban jumps 8.56m, Yago’s magic digits, and he closes the debate. Lamela’s 8.40m in the fourth is worth the silver again. “I had calculated it,” says Pedroso. “Competing with pressure in your homeland is not the same as competing with pressure in another country. Outside, the pressure is there, but you are calmer, but in your country the pressure is double. So I took advantage of that. Clear. In any case, Iago’s competition was a good one.”
The 8.56m Maebashi nails are kept by Juanjo Azpeitia, “like gold in cloth” in his house. Lamela never surpassed that mark. In May, it will be 10 years since the athlete’s death, a massive heart attack, at the age of 36. “It’s a shame that he didn’t evolve later when he went to Madrid to train with Juan Carlos Álvarez or to Valencia with Rafa Blanquer,” laments the coach. “When he returned to Asturias, he told me that in Madrid it was impossible for him to do anything because there were all cliques, and that he was a fucking shit. And I couldn’t believe it.”
Pedroso also mourns his rival. “I remember him like it was yesterday. I will always remember him as one of the good ones from here, from Spain,” says the Cuban who lives and works in Guadalajara. “Especially because it is a shame that it did not turn out to be what everyone expected. He was an athlete who, with the way he was, which was like an introvert, was always so focused that he was dangerous. At first we didn’t speak much to each other, but in the end, yes, in the end we became good friends. There was even a time when I tried to train him. He was no longer with anyone. He was already doing other things. And nothing, in the end he didn’t focus. And nothing…”
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