In the grassy areas of the seafront of Viveiro beach, where some palm trees watch the Rias Altas, a kid starts running and dodging branches, jumping curbs, completing series of 400, 500 or 600 meters while the vacationers hallucinate. You had to have a lot of passion. The beginnings of Adrián Ben in athletics in a town without tracks, 100 kilometers from his Lugo club, were handmade, stuttered, and that is why he now enjoys like no one else.
This Tuesday (21.10 hours, Teledeporte), at age 21, he will become the second Spaniard to run the 800 meters final of a World Cup after Tomás de Teresa in 1991 and thus reach a goal that escaped to notable runners like Antonio Reina, Manuel Olmedo or Kevin López . «I have dreamed it so many times that I do not know I am still dreaming. Maybe I suddenly wake up now and I am in the room of my house in Viveiro, ”he commented after the semifinals and then started crying in thanks to everyone, especially for his parents, who for years took hours and hours of car to that the kid could train in conditions three or four times a month. «I had asked the [Puerto Rican] Wesley Vázquez to sign my number and now he will be my rival in the final. The strategy is that there is no strategy. I'm going to give it my all ”, analyzed Ben euphorically after a really strange season.
Because if it's here, in the clouds, it's out of spite. Specialist in the 1,500 meters, debutante last year in the European of Berlin, this course ambitioned to be champion of European sub-23 of the distance, but he stayed outside the final and asked his people to point him to a rally to take off The rage on top. It ended in the 800 meters of the international rally of Barcelona in July and there, boom! In the rain and, without specific prior preparation, he made the minimum for the Doha World Cup and, from there, to fly.
«Everything has been very unexpected, really. Adri is a very competitive boy who, if he manages to be in the ointment in the final meters, will fight, that's for sure. The 800 is not the test in which you can stand out more, but it is a distance that adapts very well to young people, ”says his current coach, Arturo Martín , who also has Fernando Carro , the runner-up in Europe in his group of the 3,000 obstacles. Three years ago, when Ben moved to Madrid to start studying Physiotherapy at the Complutense University, he asked to work with Martín and since then his progression has been exponential. Despite the problems of combining studies and sports that he denounced this year on social networks, he is already in the third year of the Degree and does not doubt that sooner or later he will exercise.
Dragon Ball lover, so much that the many characters of the Japanese series are known by heart, has promised his friends a good meal with crab to celebrate his success in Doha, although the auction is missing before. «We will see how he recovers from the semifinals, what legs he has left and how the race is launched. It won't be slow, but it can be average, not so fast. I do not know very well what to predict, the truth, I already expect anything from Adri ”, concludes his coach, Martín, who, from sincerity, admits that he is as surprised as everyone.
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