The fight ends and, second, not defeated, Paul McGrath takes a flag that is given to him and the race, happy, runs like a rambunctious child, but with a clear purpose, up the bright blue track, his skin still crawling, he says, along ninth street to the 200 bend, where he breaks protocol, jumps over the fence, climbs the steps, and begins to kiss and hug his entire family, at least 15. This is how McGrath, from Barcelona from Gavà, celebrates a silver medal with which he joins, at the age of 22, the honor roll of the Spanish march, long like no other, even longer than the 20 kilometers that he just covered in just over 78 minutes without bending the knee, without flying over the ground more than 40 thousandths in each step. Jordi Llopart, Josep Marín, Mari Cruz Díaz, Valentí Massana, Chuso García Bragado, Miguel Ángel López, Álvaro Martín, Juanma Molina, María Pérez, Diego García, Julia Takacs, Raquel González… More than 20 medals in World Cups, Games, Europeans, and McGrath, with them, with his father’s green eyes, his Irish surname, his Catalan blood.
And McGrath knows them all, and respects them all, but he admires Miguel Ángel López above all, the man from Murcia who was world champion in Beijing nine years ago, when the boy from Gavà who loved to walk fast and strong was 13 years old. along the humid and warm paths between the orchards and canals of the Llobregat delta, and he was excited to see López enter the Olympic stadium in Beijing as a champion. “But my favorite walker is Jefferson Pérez, the Ecuadorian Olympic champion,” he says. The genius of the Andes.
Goosebumps attack him like when he was a child seeing López at the moment of leaving the dark tunnel that from the marathon door connects the track with the outside, with the world, the circuit so dynamic, so many curves, so many surfaces, asphalt, marble, mosaics, with steps and everything, so varied, and Franco Battiato in the background, looking for a permanent center of gravity, over and over again. There McGrath, sweaty because he always sweats, has fought a race, a duel with Perseus Karlström, Suecoloco is the nickname he has adopted – citizen of the world, blood of a Swedish walker in love with a Mexican walker -, which more than an endurance race and The technique was a boxing match, a few kilometers of testing, at four minutes per kilometer, and some rounds of hard blows, attacks at 3m 50s per kilometer under the sun that the sunset shades. With the audacity of youth, the audacity, and the ambition of the champion who wants to be – “I have chosen walking because I always like to win,” he proclaims, “and I decided to do it at the age of 10” –, and the soul of a gladiator who only understands life as a fight, at kilometer 11 McGrath, the lucky bracelet, the Kenyan braid that he bought in Nairobi when he was a medalist in the Youth World Cup, and he does not take it off because he once took it off and it went badly , on the left wrist, accelerates over the mosaics. Change. Faster than ever. At 3m 49s per kilometer. It goes. It seems like forever, because Suecoloco accuses the live. He is staying. He is staying. It doesn’t stay. A warning for lifting your feet too long changes the tone of the fight. The Catalan from Cornellà Atlètic, and his coach, Alejandro Aragoneses by his side, always decelerates. He fears being disqualified. Karlström catches him at kilometer 14 and the two maintain a beautiful fight for a couple of kilometers. Next to each other. As Anquetil said in the Puy de Dôme, without letting Poulidor get ahead of me I will die. McGrath refuses to be overtaken. He holds the pulse until he relents. Karlström enters the stadium 10 seconds before him. He receives the loudest cry. The greatest emotion. He salutes making the sign of the horns, so Viking, with both hands, he lies down on the ground, apparently exhausted, and, suddenly, he turns around and does a few push-ups, so crazy.
McGrath only thinks about his family. In love. In the bargain, says the son, that he found in his mother and his father, an Irishman who lived in Glasgow and only lasted there for Celtic, so little did he like the bad weather. “If you want something more than a hookup, you’ll have to come to Barcelona to live with me,” McGrath says her mother told her, studying English in Scotland when they met. “And my father told him that in his life they had proposed a better plan.” It was in 1992. Ten years later he became the champion.
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