CONTINUE
It was a lesson in control and courage, starting the bike from the last position and climbing towards a historic gold, the second for Spain in that distance after the one achieved by Colomán Trabado in the first edition of 1985. Mariano García, 24-year-old athlete from Murcia , was crowned world champion in the 800 meters after ruling a very fast race, launch and agitated by the Canadian Marco Arop, in which the Spaniard had to work hard to resist the attack of the Kenyan Noah Kibet and the American Bryce Hoppel, silver so there. Álvaro de Arriba, the other Spaniard in the finale, was fourth, the most unpleasant position.
“I have remembered all the work I have done in recent months.
And he told me, here to shoot until I die”. García was referring to that appendicitis that left him without options to win a place for the Tokyo Games. The disappointment appeared two days. Then he went to work to celebrate a medal that today rewards him as the best XNUMX-year-old in the world. The particular bite of him to history.
Mariano arrived in Belgrade with the best world record of the year. A good symptom, but never definitive. He started the course with the best feelings, with that 1: 45.12 that made him the new Spanish record holder shortly after the beginning of January. But then the doubts came, the defeat against De Arriba in the Spanish Championship and the one endorsed by the British Elliot Gilles at the Madrid rally.
"I'm better than then," he said a few days ago with a special sparkle in his eyes. In the end, I will not notice the sound of the camera, I could stop the bike, the characteristic gesture that he would see the camera hit, the change for an expression of rage.
Arop's wild exit caught him off guard. He suddenly saw himself last, and so he continued until the first step through the goal. So I heard that if he wanted to adapt the options, he owed his strategy to the speed of the final. He began to overtake rivals until he was third at the time the bell rang, after Arum and Kibet. He didn't stop there. He then looked at the screens of the Stark Arena in Belgrade and set out to manage a historic race. He saw his moment on the counter, where he caught a leader who did not let go despite the insistence of his African rival «I saw that they almost passed me and I told myself that I had to hold on». The rest is already history of Spanish athletics.
Belgrado has crowned has a 24-year-old horse born in Cuevas del Reyllo (Murcia). A humble and close guy, a student of Physical Activity and Sports Sciences at UCAM who loves living in his town, walking through the terraces and training on a track that has become iconic, a 300-meter triangle of land. meters located in a park of Fuente Álamo. There, on days when there was no market, the new world champion began to forge his dreams following the instructions of Gabi Lorente, also Mo Katir's trainer.
“He dedicated this victory to my father, I hope he doesn't complain about the gift I've given him”, he stated shortly after the race, once again the frank smile on his face. "My future? I'm not going to change, I'm very comfortable and if someone doesn't like my personality, it's the one I have. I don't feel like a favorite from now on, I still think I'm one of the bad guys and that I have to improve. You have to train hard and the coach gives me homework. We will continue the same, as if we were nobody”.
