Toni Puig, who has not yet been able to hug his Quique Llopis, the hurdler who has breastfed generously since he was a child and who is already grown, and very grown, and his beard is already beginning to thicken, descends rapidly down the stairs that go up to the upper stands of the Olympic Stadium. Although not yet 24, he has just won a European silver medal in the 110m hurdles, the most thankless event. “He has already taken a step forward. A step without return,” says the Gandía coach. “Well, he hasn’t given it now, he started giving it after the fall of Istanbul. And at the World Cup in Budapest last year he was already seen.” Puig talks about how the athlete from Bellreguard, a neighboring town, overcame the blow to the head he suffered when he stumbled over the last hurdle of the 60m in the final of the European Indoor Championships in the Turkish capital and which left him lying unconscious in the center of the pavilion. Puig speaks of the athlete with marvelous qualities who two years ago, in the final of the European Championships in Munich, allowed himself to be overcome by pressure and anxiety. And he talks, almost without meaning to, about how athletics are cycles, being up, being down, growing, falling, and overcoming everything. He talks about Asier Martínez, the European champion in Munich, whom Llopis loves more than anyone, and who, by his side, in the mixed zone, sobs and hugs his coach, François Beoringyan, a Frenchman from Paris, who consoles him. and he promises that in August, when the Games are held, he will take him to his neighborhood on the outskirts, and he will see if he can still resist some of the graffiti that he painted on his walls when he was younger and was Swan, the cloud. “And it is better to fail now than in the Games,” he says, and remembers that Asier Martínez, from Navarre from Zizur Mayor, born in 2000 as Llopis, was already a finalist in the Tokyo Games at the age of 21. “That, of course, if we could know when we were going to fail.”
Asier did not know this, as he finished fourth (13.45s) in a final that started disastrously, with a zero start, and the memory of the zero start in the Glasgow World Cup final in the 1960s, in March, although this time it was only punished with a yellow card. In the second start, he disappeared, he vanished, the strong athlete, hard as a rock, insensitive to anxiety, who has won so many titles, who always competes as well as he had done two hours before in the semifinal, dominatrix. He fell asleep in his heels, went out without rhythm, knocked down fences, stumbled stupidly, and always saw far ahead, the duel between his friend Llopis and the Italian Lorenzo Ndele Simonelli, born in Tanzania, the son of an Italian archaeologist and a Tanzanian woman, a faithful reflection, like McGrath, like Karlström, like so many young people, that a global society is possible, a mixed-race world, without borders or flags. Simonelli won with an extraordinary 13.05s, the best European mark of the year, over Llopis who with 13.16s, his best ever, enters the exclusive realm of the sub-13.20s, the crème de la crème of the world fences.
“Already at the indoor world championships, where I was fourth, I realized that 60 is not the best test I have and that my competitive level was changing a lot, both physically and psychologically. “I am much calmer,” says Llopis, the tattoo of the Harry Potter phrase, the light in the darkness, always on his arm, and the Lightning medal, his dog. “Now I have to assimilate everything and, above all, thank my family, my coach, everyone, and Asier without a doubt.
I am sure that if Asier was not doing what he is doing, whatever he did tonight, my level would not have reached this point, without a doubt.”
The best relationship in Spanish athletics also generates the greatest frustration, the apparent impossibility of both being happy on the same night, both on the podium hugging each other. “Quique’s result sweetens my sorrow a little,” says the Navarrese hurdler. “He did bring out what needed to be brought out when he played. In Munich he went the other way around.
In this case I was the only one who led myself into error. And Quique has made an incredible record at the time he was playing.”
Off the podium, fourth and fifth, respectively, were Adel Mechaal and Thierry Ndikumwenayo, the two Spaniards with a chance of a medal in a 5,000m final that was indecisive, hesitant, until the last lap, until Jakob Ingebrigtsen, the Norwegian phenomenon, big favorite and winner with 13m 20, 11s. Behind him the British George Mills (second, 13m 21.38s) and the Swiss Dominic Lobalu (third, 13m 21.61s) fought with the two Spaniards, already out of gas in the final stretch. The best impression was made by the surprising Barcelona sprinter Guillem Crespí, surprising finalist in the victorious 100m by local Marcell Jacobs (10.02s) and fifth place finisher with 10.18s, his best time ever. Almost as good as the three in the 800m, Álvaro de Arriba, Moha Attaoui and Adrián Ben, qualified for Sunday’s final (22.27).
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