He arrives on the back of the ultralight grey and pink Orbea with the number 323 with which he covered the 20 kilometres of the cycling race of the triathlon of the Paralympic Games in Paris, after the swimming and before the race, and with the gold medal he won that day tucked into his waist bag. With these details, Dani Molinawho will reveal himself to be a hypersensitive man who gets emotional several times during the interview, delights the photographer since, in addition, he has proposed to meet at the “bike roundabout”, a huge roundabout presided over by a gigantic iron bicycle, very close to his house in Guadalajara. When he gets off to say hello, it is impressive to hear the prosthesis of his right leg, which was amputated from the knee after a motorcycle accident when he was 22, a piece specially designed to be anchored directly to the pedal, hit the asphalt. When, after posing for the photos, Molina sits down to chat in the bar of a nearby gas station, takes off his helmet and racing glasses and looks into his eyes, I am so perplexed that I blurt it out to him:
They must have told him a thousand times that he is exactly like King Felipe.
Yes, even Queen Letizia, when she congratulated me in Paris, told me: “You are just like my husband.” I don’t mind the comparison (laughs).
Do you carry the medal with you so that no one can take it away from you?
I carry it with me because I still can’t believe it. A medal like this takes a long time to absorb, I’m still not aware of what we’ve done. An Olympic gold is very special. As an athlete I can’t achieve anything more.
So now what? Is there such a thing as post-medal depression?
Yes, there is some of that, and it is normal for it to happen to you. When you reach what you have dreamed of all your life, there can be a certain lack of motivation, but the good thing is that I have the European Championships in two weeks and the World Championships in six, and now I only think about training because I want to be European and World Champion again. I have a short-term goal.
You studied technical architecture, but you make a living from sport. Do you consider yourself well paid?
I think I earn enough to have won this medal, to support my family and live very well. But I have gone through periods when I didn’t even have enough to go to the cinema or have a drink and at home we lived off my wife’s salary (gets emotional). Dani Molina was going to be champion in 2016, but suddenly my category was removed from the Paralympic Games and our ADO scholarship was withdrawn. It was like being unemployed. I had to cross the desert without stopping training so as not to lose my form until the discipline came back and I got paid again.
He speaks in the third person and in the majestic plural, like the Pope. Why?
We have created a brand. Dani Molina is a triathlete who lives for and by sport. I am the one who runs, swims and pedals. But I have a whole team behind me. Dani Rodríguez, the best coach in the world, who is like my brother. A family, a wife and children behind me. Sponsors who have supported me when I was a nobody and others who have joined in. I couldn’t go through the world alone.
I confess that I didn’t know who you were until you won gold. Do journalists ignore para-athletes?
Well, in the end, people pay attention to you based on what you generate. Everyone knows Cristiano Ronaldo, but not other footballers. But it is true that we Paralympians seem to come out of nowhere when we win a medal. And no. We have spent years fighting, competing, travelling, training very hard, giving our all. We exist on and off the podium.
Do you think the Paris Paralympics have helped to make them more visible?
Absolutely, France has done a magnificent job, bringing people to the streets and stadiums. I was amazed to see the pool stands filled with 20,000 people. Normally, the parents, siblings and cousins of the athletes go to the Paralympic championships, if they go. And this is sport in its most immense state. We have gone from being seen as those lame, one-handed or blind champions of life to being seen as elite athletes. Someone of whom you say: damn, that guy or girl, how they swim, how they run, how they jump, how they whatever, without any further labels.
Does it bother you when people call you champion?
Look, the other day, having dinner alone in the Olympic Village, I saw an elderly couple come in with their son: a boy in a wheelchair, intubated, who could only move his head, and not much. I looked at him and said: that’s not life, that’s not living. I have everything, I live my life at 99%, I have no right to complain. When I had the accident, if what I’ve done had been done by an athlete with two legs, I would be God. So, I’m not a champion of life, I’m the best at what I do, the best Spanish paratriathlete in history. Nobody has done what I have, and, damn, it’s hard for the media to recognise that.
How was that overcoming 27 years ago?
I am a walking miracle, with and without a prosthesis. I should have been dead. That’s what the doctors told me. I’m alive thanks to a kid from the Red Cross who blocked my femoral artery on the road with the leg that later had to be amputated. Back then, I was a 22-year-old kid with a bar and a motorcycle, more or less handsome, who was successful with the girls, quite a jerk and who didn’t get along with his parents. I thought I was God, I was immortal, I had everything going for me. And then, one day I was riding my motorcycle at 80, in the right lane and calm, life gave me a slap in the face and put me in my place.
Photojournalist Miguel Morenatti, whose leg was blown off by a bomb in Afghanistan, told me he would give up his Pulitzer Prize and burn his archives to become bipedal again. Would you give up your medal for the same?
Not at all. I wouldn’t change my life now for the one I had before. Of course there are bad days. Of course I have pain and suffering. I had an infection, my knee became like a boot, and I went back to training. But if I were a normal person, so to speak, I wouldn’t have become an Olympic champion or have the life I have. But I like mine. Sport has given me everything. There are people much worse than me. There are worse things than being dead.
Have you been impressed by anything or anyone you saw at the Paralympics?
Look, the other day, I was having dinner alone in the Olympic Village and I saw an elderly couple come in with their son: a boy in a wheelchair, intubated, who could only move his head, and not much. I looked at him and said: that’s not life, that’s not living. I have everything, I live my life at 99%, I have no right to complain.
Define your workout pain for those who don’t know it.
The worst pain of my life is not that, but the 20 days after the accident. I remember them as torture. They made a mistake by putting a catheter in to anaesthetise me and even the painkillers used to rescue me were not working just when they had just amputated my leg. I cried and cried and cried and my mother, at my side, did not know what to do. I will never forget it. You understand that feeling when you are a father (gets emotional). Look, I wouldn’t give anything to get her back, but I would give the other leg for my children.
You are 50 years old. Do you have a plan B for when you retire from competition?
There is always a plan B. Mine is to retire to my house in the village, here near the Sacedón reservoir. I have invested my money in that happiness, but I believe that for smart and restless people there is always a future. If I want to have a job, I am convinced that I will not lack one. Thanks to sport I have made many contacts, many friends, I know many people…
Now he tells me that he is tempted by politics. He wouldn’t be the first athlete to get involved in it.
Well, I was already on the PP list for the Junta in Castilla La Mancha and it was a miracle that I didn’t get out. I was going to support the candidacy, but I didn’t want to get out because you can’t be an elite athlete and a politician: you have a discipline regarding food, travel, everything.
What would be your star measure?
Sport, sport and sport. Sport is health, well-being, life, values, an excellent economic engine for cities and something very important for children. And, in this, parathletes are an example. I go to my son’s school to pick him up and give talks, and the children are amazed. They don’t say: “poor thing, Gonzalo’s dad is missing a leg,” but rather they say: “wow, look what he does.”
For his children he will be Superman, of course.
Well, the oldest, who is eight years old, already has a hard time giving me a kiss when I drop him off at school. But, yes. They paint me with the prosthesis. I put on shorts in April and take them off in November. Once a girl asked him what’s wrong with your dad, and he answered: “Nothing, my dad is like that.” That would be absolutely normal, that they see us as normal as we are.
Between you and me, did swimming in the Seine give you the creeps?
I have swum in worse rivers. A lot of importance has been given to that. In the end it is an urban river where everything happens, including a lot of shit. They have made it more epic than it is. I am used to swimming against the current in swamps and in the open sea. I swim well anywhere. To win in Paris the strategy was simple: the better you swim in tough places, the easier it is to exhaust your rivals and make them suffer so that they arrive at the bike tired. So, I was beating them all, even if I lost more time on the bike. In triathlon the time doesn’t matter, the mark is secondary, what matters is winning.
Crushing your rivals doesn’t sound very sporting, let’s say.
(laughs) Well, that’s a way of speaking. I’m not a machine, although my coach once told me that I was the best machine he ever trained. I’m very competitive. I don’t even like losing at chess. My son Gonzalo taught me, and he knocks me out, and it really pisses me off.
SWIMMING, PEDAL, RUNNING
Daniel Molina Martínez (Madrid, 50 years old) was born for the second time at the age of 22, the day when a motorcycle accident severed his femoral artery and his recovery required the amputation of his right leg from the knee. Until then, he swam as an amateur athlete but, upon leaving the hospital, swimming, first, and triathlon, later, was the support that the then Technical Architecture student clung to in order to overcome the trauma. As a parathlete, Molina has been a five-time world champion and six-time European champion, before winning gold at the 2024 Paris Paralympic Games. For him, the prosthesis is, more than a gadget, an extension of his body. He has at least seven: “Two for running, two for walking, one for cycling, one for skiing and one for water skiing.” He does not rule out adding some to his collection. “You can always improve the technique, but the real machine is me,” he jokes.
