“Only children and birds know the true taste of cherries,” wrote Gianni Mura, who did not know Jordan Díaz, but spoke of him, of the Cuban jumper, graceful, winged, beautiful as a bird, like Achilles, the his light feet, when he approaches the triple board and bounces and jumps and flies, easy, loose, 17.52 meters, and his childish laughter, his joy, his naive nonsense, that of someone who does not have to answer to anyone , that of the free athlete. Like a child. Like a bird. The best Spanish athlete. One of the best in the world, absolute, what swing innate dancer in his career, what inertia, like a Havana Federer turned hunter in the clouds to the rhythm of salsa.
In the endless legs of Jordan Díaz, a 23-year-old boy so devoted to perfection that, even though nothing hurts him, even though his muscles are perfect, he bandages his thigh like a mummy, puts strips of tape on his knee —“ “This way I get the fear of injuries out of my head,” he says, and his golden canines shine in his mouth. “In his ankles, in his Achilles tendon, an endless spring, rest the desires for greatness of the Spanish fan.” , who on Tuesday (8:55 p.m.) will not blink for a second contemplating his expected fight in the final with the Portuguese Pedro Pablo Pichardo (17.48m in qualification), Olympic, world and European champion, stereotypical representative of the Cuban model of triple, speed and flight, a lot of bounce, a balloon. “Yes, we will play for the title between the two of us. He is the champion. I am the new one who is going to remove him from the throne,” says Díaz after the triple qualification, his first competition with the Spanish national team shirt after having obtained nationality almost three years ago. And he does not need to remember that the two of them have been the only ones who have gone over 17 meters, and sufficiently, in the previous one, a symptom of the superiority of both. “The only thing that annoys me is that I failed on the first attempt, which forced me to spend more when I was going with the idea of doing just one jump, and my coach, Iván Pedroso, already reproached me for it. “One jump and I’m gone, that was the idea.”
It will be an Iberian duel with a Caribbean accent, as Pedroso is also Cuban, a kind of godfather in Rome, and around him there is always a gathering of Cuban athletes who have emigrated to Europe, a Little Nomadic Havana that does not need games of dominoes to feel at home. “I’m not worried that Jordan doesn’t compete much. I’m more interested in him being well. We have the difference with the fences, with the races, which need races to start. We jump, we measure and we know how we are. It’s a tape measure. The only difference we have is the null, the plasticine, but when we train, we measure and we know where we are,” says Pedroso to try to explain why Díaz has barely jumped in the last two years. “The goal is, of course, for him to jump 18 meters. But there’s no need to talk about that. I want him to go step by step, and he will come out. I feel with him like the jeweler who must cut the most valuable diamond, and I work without fear of breaking it, but rather cutting everything well so that it is more valuable, so that it costs more. I’m tuning it right so that when he comes out, he comes out perfect. Let him surprise the public a little. He makes everything look easy. He is the natural jumper.”
The opposition of Pichardo, 30, one who refuses to lose, a natural competitor like Pedroso was when he was a jumper, and the special characteristics of the Olympian’s diving platform suspended over the stands more than two meters, could make The 18 meters arrive before Paris, the Olympic Games in 55 days, which is the designated place. “In 2018 I blew out my back jumping on a track like that,” recalls the long jumper (1.93m, 72 kilos), with a best mark of 17.87m, “and I came with a little apprehension. But then I saw that this one is better made. It is as it is. It’s just about getting the hang of it, the rhythm. I have no problem with this platform.” He is informed that Pichardo, with whom he does not speak, has no relationship, has never shared anything with him, has said that in the final he will jump 18 meters, a distance that he has not reached since, in 2015, at the age of 21, He broke the Cuban record with 18.08m, and only seven jumpers in history have surpassed that length in a specialty in which the world record is 18.29 meters, Jonathan Edwards for 29 years. “We don’t have to talk anymore,” he says. “If he jumps 18 meters I will jump 18.01m, because I am going to beat him.”
And with that high, if he delivers, he will arrive in Paris ready to challenge the other great emerging talent, the fantastic Jamaican Jaydon Hibbert, 19 years old, another boy light as the breeze and winged as a bird who leaves everyone with their mouths open when It jumps and easily reaches 18 meters as well.
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